The eighth year of Zero Waste at Trail Marathon was another success! It has the special distinction of being the first race I did Zero Waste for, and the first cupless race RF Events put on, which means an event that celebrates the beauty of the environment also respects it, with minimal waste generated. And a little rain to kick off the morning led to a great day for a trail run, with pizza and beer for the finishers.
We put the main Zero Waste station by the entrance/exit to the post-race party area, where everyone had to pass if they wanted beer or coffee. During registration we set up a table outside the area with the boxes of free stuff (clothing, water bottles, etc.) and kept them there. The ultra aid station for the marathon & 50K was within sight nearby, so we left an All Waste box there and swapped it out periodically, which we also did at the beer table.
The calm before the (wind) storm. Naturally, our sign blew down, even with the stability bars.
The pizza was from Little Caesar’s, with coffee provided by a Good Sense Coffee truck, serving in compostable cups.
Main waste streams were pizza boxes for compost and beer cups and water bottles in recycling. They were low weight but high volume, filling two 96-gallon carts each. We also had a good amount of cardboard from water jugs, finisher medals, and T-shirts.
The aid station bags arrived around 2:30 (ish) and while it’s never fun sorting out Gu packets from the food waste and water jugs, having the stations be (mostly) cupless helped a lot with the sheer volume we had to process. We collected enough Gu wrappers to nearly fill a 5-gallon pail.
Lucy and Damon dive into the aid station bags.
Thanks to intern Lucy working her first event, and Damon for volunteering in the afternoon, when we needed help the most!
About the only improvements I can think of would be to begin takedown a bit earlier and to set up a dedicated platform (two tables together) for sorting the aid station bags so we don’t have to do that on the ground.
Happy Planet Running 