by Green Team captain Rachael Rewitzer
What a time to BEE a sustainable race! Sunday was the RF Events Scrumpy Skedaddle at Almar Orchards & Cidery, home to JK Scrumpy cider, a necessity after their 5k and 10k races. Despite a large number of aggressive yellow jackets bingeing on leftover syrup, no one got stung while we collected 224.60 lbs of total waste with a diversion rate of 98.5%, which I think is my personal best for events I have captained.
The Zero Waste Ground Zero station was set up in the back next to the baby pigs and Chris Cakes, the delicious pancake breakfast vendor. All plates and utensils were compostable,and all the leftover food was hand delivered fresh to the piggies! Registration was stationed down the road and had access to their own zero-waste collection bin that was sorted after the 10k started.
Another zero-waste collection bin was also placed near the finish line with HPR Intern Alex patrolling for any loose waste that needed to be collected. Our volunteer Jordan and I continued to hold down the main station and do some interviews with the animals to see if they had any sustainability tips. (See our Instagram feed for the interview!)
Most of our compost consisted of leftover food and compostable forks and plates with our recycling consisting of plastic water bottles and cups. Our specialized TerraCycle recycling consisted of smaller plastics such as straws, race bibs, and ribbons. The landfill was only 3.4 lbs, consisting of diapers, tape, and contaminated material.
There were some bins at the front of the property that could not be moved or covered by HPR. Alex tried her best to recover as much race waste as she could from them, but it was not 100% successful. But that does not change the fact that the Scrumpy Skedaddle was an overall zero-waste success!
(Ed. note: Since the orchard was open to the public during the race, it wasn’t feasible for us to cover all their trash cans. Retrieving what we could from them was all I can ask of my team. Great work!)
Happy Planet Running 