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:

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I’ve been meaning to write a news summary post for a few weeks now …

On 10/30, Running USA’s Wire had a rundown of new elements for this year’s ING New York Marathon, including a list of eco-friendly practices and statistics. On the same day, the New York Times Green Inc. business blog had a post about the NY Marathon going greener, which was a follow-up post to one written on 10/14 titled Marathons: Reducing the Runner’s Footprint.

On 9/27, a story in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review previewed initiatives the city’s Great Race was undertaking to reduce the event’s environmental impact. Citiparks program coordinator Alex Shamraevsky, who attended the Road Race Management Green Events Workshop last April, said he “came back with the idea to create several recycling areas at the finish area — marked with green balloons — with city-owned collection bins and even containers for compostable material like banana and orange peels.”

In addition to the Green Inc. blog posts mentioned above, the New York Times has run two other stories recently: Saving the Earth, One Road Race at a Time, and a story about the ING Hartford Marathon taking part in two green projects–the Council for Responsible Sports’ ReSport Certification “seedling” program, and AFMInc’s Heatsheets recycling pilot project.

The November issue of Runner’s World was dubbed the “Green Issue,” and among its many features was a list of the 10 Greenest Races, and a recap of things 14 different races are doing to reduce their environmental impact.

Not to be outdone, Running Times’ November issue also featured a number of green running stories. They’re not available to link to online, but here’s a link to a Running Times Radio podcast on how races can lessen their environmental impact.

Finally, Good Dirt Radio’s current feature is a piece on the running industry’s efforts to go green, with interviews from participants in last April’s Road Race Management Green Events Workshop.

I’m sure I’ve missed a story or two. If you’ve got a link, please send it along via the comments link below.

Recently, we have had race directors contact us, wondering about using this new “plastic” that can be composted.  Specifically, they ask if it is something they should use for runners’ goody bags and other items.  Somehow the words “it’s compostable” have acquired a certain magic ring around events that are trying to minimize their environmental footrpint.

Our answer has been that PLA (polylactic acid, aka corn plastic) is not suitable for event use at this time because there are really no green options for its reuse.  Yes, it can compost, but only in a commercial composting setting.  And, even when composted, it breaks down into water and CO2 which adds nothing to the finished product.

The best option of course would be to remanufacture it into another PLA container, but we are not aware of any PLA container producer that is currently set up to take back this material from the public.  When one tries to recycle PLA with other plastics, like #1 PET plastic bottles, it becomes a contaminant due to its different chemical properties.  This increases the danger of having the entire load of plastics rejected. And, if PLA is somehow left in the batch of recycled plastic, it can harm the processing of the petroleum based plastics.

With the recent economic downturn, recycling markets including plastics are on thin ice, and we would hate to see them further disrupted by the introduction of PLA into their facilities.  We feel it is an improper use of resources to create a product that is used once and then discarded.  And, because it adds nothing to the composting process, we don’t give it much credit for its compostability either.

Recent articles in The Oregonian and Vancouver Green Business Journal offer a more in depth examination of this topic.

If you visited this Web site over the summer and wondered what Lee and I were up to, thanks for coming back. Even though you might have thought we lost the plot, we’ve been quite busy. It’s just that our work with clients wasn’t far enough along to shout about–most of it still isn’t.

We are, however, pleased to be able to announce our involvement in AFMInc’s pilot project for recycling Heatsheets. Here’s a press release that went out today:

AFMInc Launches Pilot Heatsheets® Recycling Program

Tests at six fall marathons will contribute to the development of a recycling protocol for low density polyethylene at road races across the U.S.

September 10, 2008, Petaluma, CA: AFMInc President and Chief Operating Officer, Stephanie Deigan, announced today a recycling pilot project she described as “well underway.” The intent of the project is to develop and provide extensive guidelines to running events of all sizes for the recycling of their plastic waste, including AFM’s highly visible Heatsheets-on-a-Roll™ finish line and aid-station heat-reflective plastic blankets.

Six marathons of various sizes, representing a wide range of U.S. recycling markets, were selected from AFMInc’s Heatsheets customer base to participate in this fall’s pilot project, including: the Portland Marathon, October 5th in Portland, OR; the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon, October 5th in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN; the ING Hartford Marathon, October 11th in Hartford, CT; the Mohawk Hudson River Marathon, October 12th from Schenectady to Albany, NY; the IMT Des Moines Marathon, October 19th in Des Moines, IA; and the Nike Women’s marathon, October 19th in San Francisco, CA.

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In the preceding post, I mentioned that there’s a movement afoot to reduce the impact of running events, triathlons, bike races and the like. One of the driving forces behind this nascent movement is the Council for Responsible Sport.

Jeff Henderson and Jonathan Eng launched the Council in September 2007 with the thought that the broader world of sport could do with a little cleaning. To that end, they’ve developed a draft set of standards for green event certification which can be viewed here. The key word in the previous sentence is the word DRAFT. Jeff and Jonathan are sincere in wanting these standards to be objective, transparent and inclusive and, thus, are encouraging folks to comment on the draft standards using this form.

I’ve already let them know how I think the standards should be tweaked. Why don’t you take a few minutes to do so as well?

Are you part of the problem of part of the solution? What do you do with the thousands of cups, water bottles and other trash generated by your event? What efforts do you or should you make leading up to race day?

On April 5th, in Arlington, Virginia, running event directors from across the country will gather to learn:

• Which U.S. road races are setting the Green Standard?
• What are best practices?
• Where do you go to find green vendors?
• And much, much more.

Please join me as I lead this all-day workshop presented by Road Race Management.