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.

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.

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.

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.