HPR is thrilled to announce we have picked up several events in the Grand Rapids area, and we kicked off our season there with the Tris4Health Grand Rapids Triathlon in Ada! The event covered two days, with a sprint and super sprint on Saturday, and the Olympic and 70.3 (half Ironman) distances on Sunday. One neat feature was a team of “strippers” who helped the athletes off with their wetsuits. (I will leave it to the reader to figure out any connection between this and Zero Waste.)
Tris4Health set up the main Zero Waste station for us (thanks!) between the food tables and the beer tent. We put All Waste boxes in the beer tent and on top of a park trash can in the finish area, which we swapped out when full. We also gave one to the VIP table, which provided extra food and assistance to sponsors and charity partners.
We put just two waste bins in transition on Saturday, which turned out to be insufficient. On Sunday the staff took six of our All Waste boxes and ran them down the center of transition. This worked really well, as they were easily visible and easily swapped out. There was also one box at Bike Out, which moved to Run Out later in the day.
We also needed a station at the swim start. Four All Waste boxes on a couple of tables did the trick. The start was about a quarter-mile walk from the finish. It would have been best to have a Green Team member down there until it wrapped up, but this year we had to settle for periodically going down there to swap boxes.
Food was varied and plentiful. A variety of pastries were available in the morning, with pizza and BBQ later on. Bananas and watermelon were popular, as were the little snack bars. We supplied the event with compostable plates and sporks per Tris4Health request. (We did not supply the hat in the photo below.)
As with any first-time race, there were a couple of hiccups. The biggest one was the appearance of two large bags of unsorted waste on Sunday, just as we were packing up. They came from Saturday and had been put in a trailer. The most likely source was transition, but it remains a mystery. Jeff sorted them on Monday. All categories went up a bit, including landfill, but we still managed over 95 percent diversion.
I also had to break the unfortunate news to the nice lady at the VIP tent that her advertised “recyclable” coffee pods were not worth the higher price she paid for them. Only the plastic cup portion can be recycled, and it is too small for standard recycling. TerraCycle to the rescue this time! After rinsing out the coffee grounds, I put them in my Kitchen Separation Zero Waste Box.
The following are some ideas for improvement:
- Use Sunday’s line of All Waste boxes in transition for both days.
- Investigate ways to cut down on duct tape. It was a large proportion of the landfill.
- Like with Waterloo G&G, the BBQ pans crusted with mac & cheese required me to soak and scrub them after the race. It may be helpful to set up a “soak and wash” station at the race. Hot water is available in the park’s clubhouse, or we can use a bucket heater hooked up to a generator.
- We really need more than two people staffing the Green Team each day. Between covering the swim start, finish area, and transition, we were stretched very thin, and there was quite a bit of final sorting and cleaning to do the day after the event.
- Investigate more options for local disposal of event waste. We were able to drop off Saturday’s recycling at the Kent County Recycling facility, but Sunday’s recycling and the compostables from both days had to be taken back to Ann Arbor for proper disposition on Monday.
Big kudos to HPR staffers Rachael and Charlie on Saturday, and Alex on Sunday. Bonus kudos to Charlie, who followed up his Zero Waste work on Saturday by competing in the Olympic distance on Sunday – and came in third! (His finish photo at the top of this report is from the official race photographer.) Go Green Team!
Happy Planet Running 