A cold morning in Ann Arbor, but the annual downtown Turkey Trot put on by RF Events drew its usual thousands of hardy runners. Santa was there to welcome in the Christmas season, even singing the national anthem, and colorful costumes were everywhere.
As usual we set up the main Zero Waste station at the corner of Liberty St. and Fifth Ave., near the coffee trucks and another directly across the street. We covered the city trash and recycling bins at Liberty and Fourth Ave. and between Fourth and Fifth, and put All Waste boxes there.
We put another station just past the trucks, which for some reason didn’t see a lot of action this year. However, the new trash/recycling can between Liberty and Division St., which I overlooked at first, collected a lot of race waste. I put an All Waste box there and our team pulled out the compostables in the receptacle.
At the finish line runners got water bottles and chocolate chip cookies (no bananas this year), and Bearclaw Coffee gave out hot cocoa in compostable cups. The absence of bananas plus lower attendance resulted in a significant reduction in overall waste, with 102 lbs. vs. 206 lbs. in 2024. And we never received the used water stop cups, so that also contributed to lower waste processed. (Something to follow up on for next year.)
I had a great team of staffers Iki, Jen and Bridget and volunteers Leila, Jules, and Xinyi. With their hard work we got everything collected and put away before 11:00, a very welcome result given conditions.
The only annoyances (other than the cold) were a lot of bottle caps lying loose in the road, and one All Waste box destroyed in a wind gust. But with less than one pound of landfill, we have a result worth gobbling about!
Happy Planet Running 