The Council for Responsible Sport just announced that the 2009 Austin Marathon achieved ReSport Certification, earning 25 of 41 possible cerdits to qualify for the distinction — the first certification issued by CRS this year, and only the third certification awarded to a major U.S. marathon since CRS began its pilot certification in January 2008. Eco-Logistics is proud to have worked with two of the three certified marathons in their pursuit of certification, with the Nike Women’s Marathon being the other certified event we’ve worked with.

“The Austin Marathon works to showcase the best of our city and we know that includes being environmentally responsible,” said Michelle Sandquist, Managing Director and leader of the green initiative.  “After having such great success in reducing our environmental impact in 2008, we aimed to take even bigger eco-friendly steps this year; obtaining a certification from ReSport was a validation that we’re heading in the right direction.  Striving for a sustainable and environmentally friendly marathon and half–marathon comes with constant challenges and we’ll continue to make every effort to raise the green bar for our event.  We look forward to achieving the next level of certification in 2010.”

A PDF of the complete CRS press release can be downloaded here.

Great news!

After first blogging about the carbon footprint of LOTOJA back in September 2007, I’ve finally been able to do something about it. Earlier this year, I approached Brent Chambers, the race director, and convinced him to offer participants the chance to offset their race weekend carbon emissions. Working with Steve Gutmann in EcoSecurities‘ office in Portland, Oregon, we’ve put together an offering of offset options that cover the full range of LOTOJA support vehicles, from a Prius ($1.50) to a Hummer ($3.50)

As you can see from the screen shot above, LOTOJA participants are being encouraged to confront an issue that is fundamental to this event–and fundamental to long distance running relays as well. Driving an average of 500 miles, some 1,500 vehicles rack up over 750,000 total miles over the course of LOTOJA weekend. Assuming the average vehicle gets 20 miles per gallon, with emissions of 19.56 pounds of CO2 per gallon, the carbon footprint of LOTOJA participant travel is 733,500 pounds, or 332 metric tonnes of CO2! That’s equivalent to the energy use of 30 single-family homes for one year.

By joining LOTOJA’s Green Team, race participants will be directly supporting the development of three Verified Emission Reduction projects in Utah and Idaho:  the Granger South Jordan Landfill Gas Destruction Project in West Jordan City; and Intrepid Technology Resources’ Anaerobic Digesters at the Westpoint Dairy in Wendell and at the Whitesides Dairy Farm in Rupert.   The offsets will be independently verified to the California Climate Action Registry (CCAR) protocols.

Green Team members will receive a LOTOJA Green Team decal, along with special vehicle signage and a wristband to wear proudly on race day.

Robin Hawley, an old friend and former colleague of Lee’s, has joined the Eco-Logistics team.

She comes to Eco-Logistics after her work at a private consulting firm, Ecos Consulting, focused on energy conservation and sustainability, where she managed their project management office. Robin also spent many years volunteering for the Susan G.. Komen Foundation, Portland Race For The Cure®. She started and maintained the recycling program and then went on to Chair the Race event in 2000 and 2001.. This event, with over 42,000 participants, achieved notable recovery while Robin was overseeing the recycling operations, recovering 72% of their waste while only landfilling 28%!

Robin wrote the  Race For The Cure® Recycling Guide, which you can download here.

In addition to viewing the 80s photo of Robin, you can read more about Robin’s background here.

The folks at Conley Sports–our clients in Austin, Texas–are truly committed to doing their best to stage a sustainable event.

Recognized by Runner’s World Magazine as the Greenest Race in North America in 2008, the Austin Marathon and Half Marathon issued a press release today detailing efforts to raise the bar and make the 2009 event even more environmentally friendly.

It all starts with a dedicated Green Team and a focus on eliminating unnecessary waste and pollution at every turn:

Major reductions will come from less plastic waste at water stops, fewer supply vehicles, eliminating paper inserts in the runners’ goodie bags, and distributing only one plastic bag to runners throughout race weekend (with instructions for ways to reuse it after the race).

A key component of Austin’s efforts this year goes beyond just being green: race organizers are seeking third-party certification of their efforts from the Council for Responsible Sport. ReSport Certification is making its public debut this year, after conducting a pilot program in 2008. Participation from events like the Austin Marathon will surely help raise this budding non-profit’s profile in the running world.

Who knows, the next time Runner’s World ranks green races, maybe they’ll base those rankings on points earned in the ReSport Certification process? Hope so.

For a full accounting of Austin’s green initiatives, please download the green-team-release.pdf.

The recycling guidelines Lee and I have been working on for AFMInc are now available as a PDF download from AFM’s Web site here.

What started out as an effort to develop specific recycling recommendations for AFM’s Heatsheets and other film plastics, evolved into a broader look at how mass participant sporting events should organize their overall waste recovery efforts. The end result is a booklet chock full of useful tips for race directors.

Be sure to take advantage of AFM’s generosity and download a copy of our Recommendations for Recycling at Mass Participant Sporting Events today.

AFMInc, the client we’ve been working with on Heatsheets recycling, received a last minute request from the Presidential Inauguration Committee (PIC) for Heatsheets to keep the participants in the Inaugural Parade warm until they begin their march from the U.S. Capitol to the White House. Naturally they turned to Lee and me for PR and logistical support.

What fun to work on a project like this! Our contact with the PIC was eager to help us work through the logistics of collecting the used Heatsheets and getting them to the TREX facility in Winchester, Virginia, where they’ll be processed and turned into “plastic wood” products.

Here’s a copy of the press release: Read the rest of this entry »

One of the earliest posts on this Web site touted the good work Jeff Henderson and Jonathan Eng were doing at the Council for Responsible Sport. Since that post last March a lot of green events have come and gone, some of them greener than others, many of them were covered by the media and were included in a recent  recap of green races in the news.

In another recent post, I mentioned my strong feeling that any rating or ranking of green events should be as objective as possible. Of course, I knew that the Council for Responsible Sport was wrapping up its year of pilot projects and would be rolling out a very credible set of certification standards for any mass participant sporting event to pursue in 2009–exactly the kind of objective, third party validation of green efforts I was looking for.

Well, the time has come. The Council for Responsible Sport has just published their report on the State of Sustainable Sport, along with a press release and executive summary that outline the problems, solutions and major findings from the CRS pilot initiative. You can read and download it all directly from the home page of their Web site.

If you’re a race director, I really hope you’ll explore ReSport Certification in 2009. If you’re a journalist, I hope you’ll find this very important initiative worth mentioning in an upcoming column or article.

Last weekend, I gave a presentation to Road Race Management’s annual meeting of race directors. The topic was Greening Your Event, and the theme of my talk was Catch The Wave. I’ve posted the presentation on SlideShare.net and encourage you to take a look.

Six weeks ago, Lee and I announced our first major project. (At least it’s the first big project/client that we can talk about–the other two big things we’ve been working on have been for a client that keeps their vendors on a very short leash when it comes to publicity.) Anyway, we’ve learned a lot working with David and Stepanie Deigan of AFMInc, and we’ve got a lot more to learn and work on before this particular project is a wrap.

As you’ll read below, one of the things we’ll be developing as a spin-off of this project will be a comprehensive waste management primer for our clients and other interested race directors, which will be available at no charge to race directors as a PDF download from the Heatsheets Web site.

In the meantime, here’s an update on what we’ve learned:

Read the rest of this entry »

As mentioned in the previous post, the November issue of Runner’s World listed the 10 Greenest Races in the U.S. No doubt every race on the list deserved recognition for the good work they are doing, but there are a lot of other races across the country–and around the world–that are also doing their part to minimize their environmental impact. So how are we to know which races are truly the greenest?

One thing is for sure: objective measures are needed if the running media is going to be promoting one race as being greener than another.

I’m a big fan of the Council for Responsible Sport and their ReSport Certification program for participant sporting events. Their five metrics and the standards they are developing would be a much better way to figure out which races are the greenest than a simple review of what the races have to say for themselves in press releases.

Here’s hoping that next year Runner’s World will base their top-10 on the number of points participating races earn in the ReSport certification process.