What started as a small, local hammock company out of Boulder, Colorado has quickly grown into a full-fledged online success. With its lightweight and practical products (including their flagship hammocks and reusable eco-totes), Trek Light Gear is an ever-evolving brand that is “motivated by a dedication to the environment and the quest to help people trek lightly on the planet.” As a merchant of Modern Eco Homes, we wanted to give our readers a glimpse into Trek Light Gear and the man behind it, founder Seth Haber.

Tell us about Trek Light Gear, what it is and how you got started.

Trek Light Gear got its roots when I first moved to Colorado in 2001 and started exploring the state and taking as many weekend road trips, camping trips and backpacking trips as I could. One of my problems with camping was always having the feeling that I wasn’t really getting a great night’s sleep. I’d wake up in the morning feeling way too hot and stuffy and then realize that my back was sore even though I had a good sleeping pad.  Someone suggested a hammock to me and I figured I’d give it a try.  A camping hammock, according to most camping stores at the time, was a giant ball of fishing net, it was lightweight and small but almost comical how impractical it was.  It would get tangled up easily and the string itself just screamed that it would rot out or fall apart at some point down the road. But, the light bulb definitely went off and I knew there was something to the hammock idea.  I instantly loved the idea that being outside and off the ground felt not only better for me but it felt like I was having less of an impact on the beautiful places I was camping.  I had seen so many camping spots with permanent dead soil because too many tents had been setup in the same area. As fate would have it, a few months later I discovered through a friend that some some people had been experimenting with different kinds of lightweight nylon material for hammocks so we began looking into it.  The experience I had when I tried it out for the first time was so incredible that it changed my mindset immediately from ‘I need one of these’ to ‘Everyone needs one of these’.  I wasn’t planning to start a business, but it happened the moment I found out that it was possible to solve my own problems and that nobody was doing a great job at marketing that solution or branding it in a way that could reach people.  Once the company and the Trek Light brand began to take shape I knew fairly quickly that I wasn’t going to want to stop with just one product and our Eco Totes came next.

The name Trek Light says a lot about what our products represent. In the literal sense, we aim to lighten your load by making a lightweight product. But our hammocks have also helped a lot of people to find a peaceful respite, relax more often and even feel like you’re on vacation in your own backyard.  In that way, I know we’ve also done a good job at helping people feel lighter in an emotional and spiritual sense as well.  And lastly, our products are designed to help you trek lightly on the planet by having less of an impact without sacrificing comfort, style or fun.

What are your best “green” tips for people looking to become more eco-friendly?

The biggest problem with the whole green movement is that it can be so overwhelming. No matter how much you do you could always be doing more.  I actually feel bad for anyone who has become an ‘eco-celebrity’ because they’re bound to get torn apart in the press and called a hypocrite at some point.  In my opinion anyone who’s even making the smallest of efforts deserves a ton of respect because the truth is even those small efforts are picking up the slack for the millions of people who are making no effort at all.  The best tip I can give is just to not get overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything. Carbon emissions are big, but there’s so much you can do around the house and in your everyday life. Most people have good recycling practices under their belt now.  Take that a step farther and stop wasting plastic by using reusable shopping and grocery bags like our Eco Totes.  Stop drinking bottled water and carry your own BPA-free water bottle.  Re-use things as much as possible!  If you bring a sandwich to work or school every day, put it in a reusable container instead of using a Ziploc baggie every day.  Use cloth napkins at the dinner table. And, of course be conscious when you’re using your sink or shower and try to use less water in general, our water problems are taking a backseat to carbon in the media right now but water rights and water issues are going to be a major topic in the years ahead.  Unfortunately we tend not to really hear about a lot of environmental issues until it’s already in crisis mode.

Overall, just try to make small improvements in your life and at the same time try to encourage others around you to do the same. If you see someone doing something wasteful and you’re comfortable talking to them then say something! It’s amazing how many things people do that are wasteful without realizing it, it’s just routine or habit.  Once you hear it or realize it yourself, it makes you think about it. You don’t need to be preachy, and depending on the person you may get a snotty response no matter what, but I promise it’s effective. They may not change their habits right away, but you’ve given them even the slightest bit of awareness about it that they never had before and it’s that awareness that is driving the environmental movement.

What are your passions and hobbies?

I’m one of those people that wants to see everything and do everything and if I had all the money and time in the world I’d begin by trying to check them all off my list.  The outdoors, traveling and seeing new places are obviously big passions but naturally since starting a business like Trek Light Gear I don’t get to travel as much as I’d love to.  But, the products that I’m putting out there are traveling all over the world so I do get a lot of happiness out of enabling people to enjoy themselves and the thank you emails and photos I get from people definitely make it all feel worth it in a lot of ways. I love seeing live music and I love staying active in Boulder with all the awesome rec sports – I never thought I’d be playing organized softball, sand volleyball and kickball at the same time and looking forward to every game like it’s the championship.  There’s beer involved of course, so we don’t take ourselves too seriously, but you know we do. Tons of fun. I consider myself lucky to have such a great group of friends and live in a great town like Boulder, every day is a new adventure no matter how busy I am.

Tell us about your newest offering, the compact eco-totes.

The Eco Totes have been in our lineup for a couple of years now and have been hugely successful.  They’re made with excess material from our hammock manufacturing so it’s a win for us in terms of reducing waste and it’s obviously a win for anyone who uses them in place of a plastic or paper bag.  They pack down small enough to fit on your key chain, in your purse or pocket, etc. so you can always have them with you which is a huge boost to their eco-impact. It’s amazing how many people have reusable bags and then end up forgetting them at home and being forced to use plastic anyways.  The parachute nylon material that we use is so strong and durable that these totes will likely outlast any of the reusable bags being sold out there today.  The quality of the material does mean higher costs and a higher price point, which means I’d have difficulty getting the product into stores where I’d have to compete with the reusable bags they’re selling for a very low price.  But I’ve seen so many of those bags torn or worn out already and I just don’t get it.  Why produce more waste when selling an item that’s supposed to reduce it? The good news is that people are finding out about us and realizing that we are a higher quality and smarter alternative to some the bags they’ve seen in stores or online.  Martha Stewart’s Body + Soul magazine featured our Eco Totes last year and that brought a lot of awareness and new fans.  We’re expanding our online offering soon to include some new sizes and styles and the product line will continue to grow as long as people continue to discover our totes through word of mouth and great sites like Modern Eco Homes.

Any green tips for the upcoming holidays?

There’s so much tradition and emotion rooted in the holidays that unfortunately it’s hard to change a lot of bad habits for the sake of the environment. But the truth is so much is wasted around the holidays, whether it’s energy in the form of inefficient lighting, all the wrapping paper that ends up in the landfill and on and on.   Few people are going to want to give up their lights or hand out presents wrapped in recycled newspaper, so again you just need to focus on the smaller steps and know that you’re making a difference while encouraging other people to follow suit.  If you use holiday lights, try just turning them on for an hour or two at night while the family is hanging out as opposed to lighting up the whole neighborhood inside and out from the minute the sun goes down. And make sure all your bulbs are LED’s, CF’s or as efficient as possible.  Coordinate flights so you make fewer trips to the airport. A lot of people give our Eco Totes as small stocking stuffers, but they also make great gift bags that help you eliminate wrapping paper without ruining the surprise.  You can put a gift or a bunch of gifts in the tote and they get to open it to discover their present and keep the bag as a gift at the same time.  If you’re celebrating Christmas, think about the impact of having a real tree (and where it came from) and if you choose to get a plastic tree make sure you’re taking care of it so it lasts you as long as possible.  I’m Jewish, so luckily our holiday impact seems to be pretty low – we don’t have to wrestle with any eco-dilemmas surrounding the tree or whether to light up the house in true Clark Griswold fashion.  We just light a candle, hand out a gift, spin the dreidel and call it a night. Seriously though, regardless of your faith the holidays represent a time when lots of things are done in abundance and celebrations aren’t always synonymous with moderation.  Just do your best to waste less, keep that effort up throughout the year, and the world will be a better place without ruining anybody’s holiday fun.