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.
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.
As a follow-up to the How Green Is Your Event workshop I led last April, my friends at Road Race Management asked me to compile a Guide To Greener Running Events. The booklet is now available to order, and I hope the race directing community will find it to be a useful compendium of trends and ideas for making a running event–or any participant sporting event, for that matter–more environmentally responsible.
Highlights of the booklet include a summary of the results of a survey of some 100 race directors about their environmental policies and practices as well as a snapshot of what 29 different races are doing to reduce their environmental impact.
I hope you’ll check out the descriptive blurb on Road Race Management’s Web site.
By the way, if you wanted to attend my green events workshop last April, but could not, please note that I’ll be speaking on the topic again at Road Race Management’s Annual Race Directors’ Meeting in Hollywood Beach, Florida on Friday, November 7, 2008. You can learn more about the conference and download a PDF of the meeting brochure here.
Some of the most progressive road races in the US were in attendance at last weekend’s Road Race Management workshop on green running events. Everyone had good news and great ideas to share, but I was most impressed by the strides these three events are making:
The AT&T Austin Marathon is a member of the Greenteam that’s being promoted by Runner’s World and Nature’s Path Organic–the only concerted effort I’ve seen that draws attention to the good work many events are doing. (In fact, absent a sponsor conflict with Nature’s Path, I cannot see why every event that is making tangible progress toward environmentally responsible goals and objectives wouldn’t want to be a part of the Greenteam.)
In addition to being a Greenteam member, the AT&T Austin Marathon features a few green innovations that didn’t show up anywhere else in my pre-workshop survey of running events:
Lee and I strive to provide valuable counsel to participant sporting events that are trying to clean up their act. But we’re far from being the only experts in this field. So when we discover useful resource materials, we’re pleased to share them with our clients and visitors to this Web site.
In 2002, Robin Hawley, an old friend and former colleague of Lee’s developed a recycling guide for Portland, Oregon’s Race For The Cure. Robin has worked extensively in the recycling field since receiving her Masters in Public Administration from Portland State University in 1998. She worked on the commercial recycling program for the Office of Sustainable Development for the City of Portland from 2000 until 2003, then joined the regional government, Metro, and took over responsibility for improving business recycling in the Portland region from 2003 to 2005. During that time she was also the lead individual responsible for event day recycling for the Susan G. Komen Foundation Race For The Cure, in Portland, Oregon. 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%! Ms. Hawley is currently employed by Ecos Consulting, running the Program Management Office.
Thanks to Robin, here’s the link to a PDF that’s chock full of tips and stats for those of you who are trying to set up or improve your event’s waste management systems: race-for-the-cure-recycling-guide.pdf
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?
The status quo for today’s participant sporting events is shockingly wasteful.
If you wonder just how wasteful, read this post on another blog I keep. It talks about a bike race I do that accounts for nearly 500,000 miles driven by race participants over the course of a weekend!
On the brighter side, there’s a movement afoot to reduce the impact of running events, triathlons, bike races and the like. Just as more and more people are becoming familiar with the threats of global warming, so, too, are everyday athletes becoming more concerned about the tremendous side effects of the events they participate in regularly.
Lee and I are pleased to be a part of the effort to create more environmentally responsible participant sporting events. For both of us, it’s a logical extension of our professional careers and our active lifestyles, not to mention the role we played as Cascade Run Off Race Committee members in 1981–the year the Run Off rejected the status quo and offered above-the-table prize money to its winners.
We were pleased to be agents of change in 1981 and we are excited to be agents of change once again.
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:
Please join me as I lead this all-day workshop presented by Road Race Management.
