Report written by HPR event captain Sara Haleblian
Featured image courtesy of Greg Sadler Photography
This year’s Epic Races Island Lake Triathlon was another good one! The weather was perfect and there was a great turnout of 327 athletes. To make it even better, the Happy Planet Running team was there to make all that fun sustainable.
On the Zero Waste Team, we had three interns: Sara (me) serving as captain for the event, as well as Marilyn and Anna Beth. We had one main station where we collected and sorted all the waste. We also had several boxes around the event such as in the transition areas and by the cooking tents for any additional waste generated by the event.
The food prepared by volunteers for participants after the event consisted of pancakes, fruit, mac and cheese, and breakfast burritos. There was also a coffee truck which provided delicious coffee drinks to people at the triathlon.
The team did an excellent job sorting throughout the event and there was never really a pile up of waste! The majority of the waste came in the form of compost –which mostly consisted of leftover food and compostable plates. The majority of the landfill waste came from contaminated aluminum foil and items with tape on them.
The event wrapped up around noon. After that, it was a sorting and weighing frenzy until Jeff arrived at 1:15 to pick everything up. In total, we diverted 92 percent of waste collected from the landfill!
Another successful triathlon in the books!
Happy Planet Running 