Here’s a timely tip from my friend Jim Gerweck, Editor-at-Large for Running Times:

With primary season just around the corner, methinks there will be a lot of corplast looking for a second life …

Hmmm, I wonder how many environmentally aware pols will use bioboard instead of corplast?

More and more races are asking participants what they think of the event’s efforts to green things up, typically as part of a post-event survey. But I can’t recall having a client ask runners about their green initiatives pre-race, specifically as part of the registration process.

In the there’s-a-first-time-for-everything category, the Chevron Houston Marathon folks are doing just that. And the response rate is not only high, but the rate of positive responses is very encouraging:

• When asked “are you aware of the Houston Marathon Committee’s efforts to go green,” 53% of registrants (8,188 runners) answered yes.
• When asked “is participating in a certified green event important to you,” 51% of runners (7,942 runners) answered yes.

In regards to the second bullet, Houston runners should be pleased: the Houston Marathon Committee intends to pursue certification from the Council for Responsible Sport next January.

By the way, Houston’s numbers compare very favorably with recent post-race survey results from the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run:

• 63% of respondents said they were aware of Cherry Blossom’s application for CRS Certification, and
• 82% of respondents said that green certification was important to them.

Other tidbits from the Cherry Blossom survey included:

• 79% of respondents said there were “concerned” to “extremely concerned” about the environmental impact of running events, and
• 81% preferred receiving an iGiftBag Virtual Goodie Bag over a conventional goodie bag.

If you’ve got interesting survey results to share on the subject of greening races, please do so via the comments box.

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about effective signage.

As I was working on a blog post for the Council for Responsible Sport the other day, announcing newly certified races, I received some great photos from my friend April at the Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle. Their signs clearly meet the objectives for effective signage outlined in my previous post, and are worthy of a photo essay:

Shamrock Shuffle Green Team Ready to Recycle and Compost

Clearly Marked Bike Valet Parking at Shamrock Shuffle

Signage Pointing the Way to Bike Valet Parking at Shamrock Shuffle

By the way, Congratulations to April and her Green Team for earning Silver Certification from the Council for Responsible Sport!

The other day, I had a great meeting with Ben DeWitt and Tom Taylor, the guys behind Compete Green and the Ojai 2 Ocean Marathon (half marathon, too). As they say: Our mission is to enjoy healthy, endurance lifestyles while promoting sustainability and environmental awareness through our events. We strive not to just use our beautiful world, but to become a growing and symbiotic part of it.

I’ve got to say, it’s so refreshing to see two young guys trying to do the right thing as they launch their green event management business. Not that I don’t have a lot of respect and admiration for all the event organizers of existing events that are trying to retrofit their product and processes to be more sustainable, but when you’re starting from scratch, like Ben and Tom are, it  can give you a tremendous head start on going green.

How so? Well, you can start fresh with a network of like-minded vendors, for one thing. Compete Green is working directly with suppliers like Greenlayer Sports, Tribute Sport and Walden Surfboards to source eco-friendly apparel, medals made from recycled materials and mile markers made from old surfboards, respectively. Add to that a commitment to support environmental charities — in Ojai 2 Ocean’s case by auctioning off the 13th and 26th mile markers — and you’ve got the makings of a green racing revolution.

As the green event movement matures, look for more young entrepreneurs like Ben and Tom to take up the mantle of racing towards a better environment.

There’s a lot of signage to look at in this photo — all of it good.

But I’ll focus my comments on the blue recycling banner in the center of the photo. It’s one of 30 now in circulation, thanks to a joint investment by the Lilac Bloomsday Association, the Atlanta Track Club and Eco-Logistics.

The idea of our shared banner program is to meet each party’s needs without any one of us having to purchase an excessive inventory of banners. On an ongoing basis, Eco-Logistics needs as many as 10 banners to service the smaller events we work with, while Bloomsday and Peachtree each require as many as 20 banners on race day — so we split the order, and we share. In addition to race day use at Bloomsday and Peachtree, the banners in Spokane and Atlanta are available for use by other Spokane area special events and other races put on by the Atlanta Track Club, respectively.

The idea for the shared banner program came from a similar program for sharing Clearstream recycling containers (the wire frame with clear bag and blue top to the right in the photo) in Spokane. Last year, Bloomsday, Hoopfest and the CIty of Spokane invested in a couple hundred Clearstream recycling containers, which are made available to special events throughout the Spokane area.

If this post inspires you to purchase recycling station banners for your event, I’d like to encourage you to consider setting up a similar sharing program to ours — there’s no point in having stuff sit in a warehouse 364 days a year!

FYI, here’s a list of our objectives for this program:

At the recent Plastics Recycling Conference in New Orleans, held March 1-2, Jerry Powell, Executive Editor at Resource Recycling, gave a presentation titled Eureka! All plastics can be made degradable. A PDF of his presentation is available here.

The reason we’re sharing Jerry’s presentation with you is simple: ever since we first wrote about the growing confusion about what to do with plastic bottles — recycle or compost them — event directors have been bombarded with conflicting messages about the wonders of things like Coke’s new “plant bottle.”

With conflicting info, what’s a race director to do? Don’t mix degradable plastics with recyclable plastics. And, don’t believe all the marketing hype you may be hearing about degradable plastics.

One of the challenges many event directors face is how to deal with the permanent trash receptacles on many city streets. Our counsel is to somehow take them out of circulation for the day and direct folks to the nearest recycling station, where a volunteer can encourage people to put trash in the trash bin, recyclables in the recycling bin and compostables in the compost bin.

The photo to the left was taken at this year’s LIVESTRONG Austin Marathon, where the centralized recycling collection effort was quite successful. In fact, race day waste stats in Austin this year reveal a 79% year-over-year decrease in the amount on waste sent to the landfill. Of course, that was due to an integrated waste collection effort, not just the result of “capping” city trash cans. But, the “capping” effort has proven to be an effective component in the efficient collection of race day waste. If nothing else, it saves a lot of time and effort by green team volunteers, who would otherwise have to separate collected trash from recycling and compostables.

The photo below, from this year’s Credit Union Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run, is a good example of an effective centralized recycling station. Clearly marked cardboard containers were dedicated to trash and food waste, while the ubiquitous Clearstream recycling bins accommodated recyclables. What you can’t see in this photo, other than the black pole in the middle of the photo, is the highly visible overhead signage that calls attention to the location of the recycling station.

We’ve got some new recycling station banners in the works that we’ll test at the Lilac Bloomsday Run next week. Stay tuned for photos and a critique.

When the Green Sports Alliance was launched on March 21, the New York Times Green Blog advanced the following point of view: the American public is generally more passionate and involved in sports than in politics.

As Allen Hershkowitz pointed out in his National Resources Defense Council post on Switchboard, the NRDC staff blog: Sports matter. Outside of the family, the most influential role models in our society are athletes and entertainers. The most widely watched TV shows worldwide are sports shows. And professional sports leagues are non-partisan businesses, so their embrace of environmentalism helps us deflect ideological and politically inspired attacks on the environmental agenda.

So, is it any wonder that last week, while Congress and the White House were busy puffing their chests over the Federal budget, I was more interested in seeing what the NBA was doing for its annual Green Week.

Watching the Chicago Bulls play the Boston Celtics, the first thing I noticed was the organic cotton “shooting shirt” Derrick Rose was wearing during warm-ups (I know it was organic cotton because the TNT announcers pointed it out). Then I noticed that all the players were wearing organic cotton shooting shirts (and I was told their headbands and wristbands were organic cotton as well). Then I noticed the NBA Green logo on the floor and the green padding on the backboard stanchions.

The NBA hadn’t missed a thing — they never do.

Local market initiatives and announcements ran the gamut from the Celtics clean-up day with Boston 8th graders to the roll-out of new recycling and composting bins in Portland’s Rose Garden. WNBA and D-League teams got involved as well.

In short, while our political “leaders” were frittering the week away, millions of NBA fans were being encouraged to join their favorite players in making a difference — living green, working green and playing green.

Indeed, in my humble opinion, last week sports definitely trumped politics.

One of our clients, the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run, is taking a multi-faceted approach to reducing its many transportation impacts. Even though their circumstances are unique, I think this a good case study in creating problem solving.

To begin with, the event takes place in the heart of Washington DC, with the start/finish area near the Washington Monument — in the midst of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, no less. Needless to say, parking is an issue. So, long before their “carbon footprint” became a topic of conversation, race organizers forged a relationship with Metro to promote subway ridership to and from the race.

With a 7:30 am race start, however, there was a big challenge to overcome: Metro stations typically open at 7 am on Sunday mornings. Undaunted, race organizers struck a deal with Metro to have the stations open at 5 am on race day, and the program has taken off. Last year 13,900 runners, spectators and volunteers rode Metro to the event!

Of course, Metro isn’t a convenient option for everyone, so race organizers offer the ability to purchase carbon offsets from NativeEnergy as part of the online race registration process. For $3.60, the average price of a Metro round-trip fare, runners could contribute to the Northeast Farms Separation project, which removes volatile solids from dairy farm manure, thus preventing anaerobic decomposition that would normally produce methane. This year 1177 runners contributed a total of $4237.20 to the cause, which will offset 303 short tons of carbon emissions. (As a point of reference, last year 1090 race participants purchased NativeEnergy co2 offsets that helped build the Greensburg Wind Farm in Greensburg, Kansas, which prevented over 260 short tons of carbon emissions.)

And, for those lucky enough to be able to ride their bikes to the race, Cherry Blossom organizers have worked with the National Park Service to provide a bike parking lot at 14th and Independence Avenue SW.

Finally, race organizers are working with EnviroRide to source buses that use alternative fuel for elite athlete transportation to/from the race as well as for picking up stragglers at the end of the race. In addition, battery-powered golf carts will be used throughout the start/finish area to haul trash, recycling and compostables to a central collection area.

Lots of challenges, lots of good choices made to reduce Cherry Blossom’s various transportation impacts. Kudos to the race organizers!

By the way, each of the above mentioned tactics contribute to what is hoped to be a successful application for certification from the Council for Responsible Sport — the only credible, third-party verified certification system for sports events. Stay tuned for more news about Cherry Blossom’s application after the race this weekend — once the documentation that backs up their many initiatives becomes available.

I try not to rant too often. I’d rather look on the bright side of things. But, Alaska/Horizon Airlines really disappointed me on the return leg a recent trip to the Pacific Northwest.

Here’s the story:

On the flight from Santa Barbara to Seattle, I eagerly read the chairman’s letter in Horizon Air Magazine. Titled “Pitching In,” it was all about the airlines’ extensive recycling program (you can read it yourself on page 5 of the digital edition).  As I handed my recycling to the flight attendant, who accepted it cheerfully, I thought to myself: give yourself a pat on the back (her, not me).

On the trip home, however, I had a very different experience. So much for the chairman’s boast: “… we’re pretty picky about our trash. In fact, so picky that we make sure that every cup, bottle, piece of paper and box that goes on our planes comes off as recyclable items. … It’s accomplished by our flight attendants, who — working in tandem with our ground employees — hand separate every plastic cup, glass bottle, aluminum can, piece of cardboard, newspaper and magazine they can find.”

I’m sorry to report that, no, they don’t. The flight attendant on my return flight looked at me as if I grown two heads when I asked her where I should put my recycling. In fact, in a subsequent conversation about recycling, she was pretty cavalier about her lack of commitment to her boss’s green agenda. As I recall, her comment went something like this: “Why should I bother sorting things when the folks on the ground throw it all in the trash anyway?”

Why bother? Because your boss said you would, right there on page 5.