If you’re a mom, or want to celebrate yours, what better way to start Mother’s Day than to run a 5K or 10K in a beautiful location, then enjoy a post-race breakfast with a fancy non-alcoholic cocktail? Over four hundred runners agreed, and showed up for the Detroit Mother’s Day run on Belle Isle. And HPR was there to make it as good for the environment as for the runners.
And we met Hailey, a fellow environmental advocate.
We set up a single Zero Waste Station in the vendor area next to the food tables. After noticing that people were using one of the trash cans near the fountain, we added an All Waste box there. We also put an All Waste box next to the Water Monster in the finish area to collect cups.
Post-race food included crepes with blueberry sauce in addition to the standard egg wraps, bananas, cookies, salad, and the ever-popular ice cream bars. And there were fancy “mocktails” with cut strawberries and guava tips.
And here’s Stella, who danced to Taylor Swift and sang the national anthem.
Just one little hiccup. One of the folks at the finish line had put a bin there to collect plastic wrap, and it got filled with mixed waste. Just when I thought we’d escaped any rogue trash cans! We got it sorted, but I asked that next time we know about it. And we dumped a lot of ice and fruit from the mocktails into a pail, then had to pick out the fruit at the end for composting.
Still, we ended up with just one “pail o’ trash” that held mainly ice cream bar wrappers, tape, and contaminated foil and plastic.
(We actually saved the headband.)
On the plus side, the Water Monster with plain paper cups is a huge improvement over disposable plastic water bottles. No extra water to dump out, and the cups can be either recycled or composted. Plus they can be stacked to save space.
Not really all that scary, is it.
Thanks to the Epic staff for collecting and bagging all the plastic wrap from the medals, and keeping the salad bags separate from the other waste so the oily dressing was contained. And thanks to Liz and Debbie for their usual great job staffing the station!
Happy Planet Running 