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?

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!

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.