Another perfect Friday evening for the RF Events Oberun at Wiard’s Orchards. A quick 5K followed by cold beer and good food appealed to over 1,400 runners and their families, along with live music and games.
Hey, we’re not old enough for beer. Why are we doing this? “Uh…”
We set up our Zero Waste stations in the usual places, the main one in the center of the party area with staffed satellite stations at each entrance/exit, and an All Waste box and beer collection cart near the beer tables. When I found out the Bell’s tent had a trash bag out, I replaced that with an All Waste box, as clear bins are far easier to swap and sort than black trash bags.
Volunteers this year seem to be “feast or famine,” and fortunately at this event, it was feast. I’d been told to expect three volunteers from the Canton High School swim team. Instead I lost count at eight. Add a parent chaperone and a regular volunteer to me and my staff (Han, Marilyn, and Jenny), and I worried there wouldn’t be enough work for them all.
The rush is on!
Station at an entrance/exit. Constantly busy during the rush.
Boy, was I wrong. When the rush hit everyone was busy sorting, swapping out boxes from the unattended stations, or roaming the grounds for litter. By the end I was very grateful to have had them all. My estimate is that they got well over 2,000 deposit cans for their hard work.
Well earned, guys!
There were no finisher pint glasses this year, which cut the waste cardboard by half, to just over 100 lbs. The weight of the beer cans (126 lbs.) was up nearly 20 percent, commensurate with the increased attendance and the great weather. Compost at 84 lbs. was up from last year’s 60 lbs. which makes sense given the long lines at the food trucks (Simply Spanish, PB&J BBQ, Top Dog, and Little Caesars).
Even with the swim team taking the beer cans, the HPR trailer filled quickly at takedown with our equipment and collected waste. Many thanks to staffer Marilyn, who loaded just about all the cardboard into her car, saving me the second trip this event usually requires!
We had a little trouble weighing the beer cans. My new scale is smaller and wasn’t handling the spread-out volume of the 96-gallon bags, and my older scale was acting up. And, of course, beer was leaking on everything. We managed, but the rest of the weighing was done over the weekend. I’ll need to figure out a better method for handling those large loose bags.
Also, one of the food vendors thought they had purchased compostable boats, but they were actually PE-lined, making them landfill when contaminated with food waste. Fortunately I checked before the rush hit, and PB&J BBQ gave them some actual compostable ones. Many thanks to them.
Congrats to the team for smoothly handling that intense post-race rush, and helping us to a 97 percent diversion rate, with only 12 lbs. of landfill!
High fives for Zero Waste!
Improvement ideas for next year:
- Update the guide I put together a while ago for food vendors, and provide it to all food trucks prior to the event.
Happy Planet Running 