“Food waste in the green bins, everything else in the clear bins!”
Such was the mantra of the Green Team last Sunday at the Scrumpy Skedaddle at Almar Orchards. Why the separation? For the benefit of the orchard’s pigs, naturally. And they made sure the 25 pounds of uneaten pancakes did not go to waste!
Rachael makes the piggies very happy.
Why so many “trashed” pancakes? Because Chris Cakes was serving them, and their modus operandi is to fling them from the griddle onto your plate. Naturally, some miss their targets, but this year in particular seemed to have a poor completion rate.
Incoming!
Some of the casualties.
There was also some running involved, by the way, with 5K, 10K, and 10-mile options available. Afterward there was live music, terrific cider, the aforementioned pancakes, and an open orchard store if that wasn’t enough.
As usual, we placed the main Zero Waste Station was set up at the exit of the post-race area. We put an unstaffed large All Waste box at the entrance to the building where the cider was served, and it collected a fair number of water bottles. We policed the starting line and picked up a few items, as well as some beer cans littering the road.
Former HPR intern Rachael (who now has a real job) was back as a volunteer, this race being her favorite. She and her friend Kye staffed the station, along with current intern Liz.
Kye and Rachael expound on the virtues of a Zero Waste race.
And major kudos to the finish line volunteers, who broke down and stacked the cardboard from the boxes of finisher glasses, and separately collected plastic wrap from medals and cases of water bottles!
I understand most of you won’t appreciate the beauty of this image.
One of the great things about this race is the plates and utensils are compostable, and syrup is pumped from jugs. Thus no need to pull plastic forks or little butter packets off sticky plates, as we did in the first years we served this event. The aid station cups are standard waxed paper, but had only a few Gu packets and other things to sort out. Landfill was just over one pound, so we achieved yet another 99 percent diversion rate!
The number of runners and total waste were about the same as last year, but for some reason compostables were down about 33 percent while recycling was up the same amount. This could partly be due to having to estimate some things last year (accidental oversights). The cardboard nearly doubled, perhaps due to the way the glasses were packaged.
Just one regret – the orchard’s trash cans contained many water bottles and other items we could have recovered, but the yellow jackets were all over them. I know from experience that they get agitated quickly, so I left them in peace. A small sacrifice in an otherwise very successful Zero Waste effort!
Happy Planet Running 