Last Saturday was perfect weather for the Martian Invasion of Races in Dearborn. And with the marathon being a Boston qualifier, and a NIRCA (National Intercollegiate Running Club Association) championship half marathon, that was a good thing! It also meant good working conditions for the Green Team, which is no small favor in April in Michigan.
A little slideshow of the runners.
The race “footprint” this year was more consolidated toward the north end of the park, with the start and finish lines in the same location. So Zero Waste station locations were improvised on race morning, placed in what we believed were the highest traffic areas. One was along the finish line path, one across from the food trucks, and one near the bridge leading to the afternoon kids race, along with individual All Waste boxes in the registration area. We moved a few of the park’s green rolling trash carts in the race area and covered one at the finish line with a contractor bag.
Activity at our main station.
Jeffrey (not me) and Joe hold down station #2 by the food trucks. They’re standing behind our “Free Stuff” table. We wash and give away a lot of things – clothing, equipment, even unopened gels and energy bars.
Once again we used a 10-yard covered recycling dumpster provided by Unlimited Recycling. With the new race footprint it was a long walk across the parking lot to get to it, but it meant people wouldn’t be walking by and tossing trash in. Once again we just about filled it with the collected recyclables.
Food trucks this year were The Saucer Detroit, Far Out, Good Sense Coffee, and Kona Ice. Waste was mixed, with some compostables and some poly-coated cups and containers. It required some careful sorting, but manageable.
New this year, I arranged to pick up some aid station waste at Parr Park, the marathon turnaround. This gave us a head start on the afternoon sorting, and we were nearly through that load when the final one came in. My afternoon team was smaller than I’d like but very hardworking, and we had all the recyclables sorted, weighed, and in the dumpster before we left. We were supposed to have some afternoon volunteers from NHS, but they never showed. Lesson learned: communicate better next time.
The afternoon crew hard at work. Sue is sorting aid station bags while Bridget and Marilyn weigh cardboard.
The biggest issue we faced was an enormous quantity of “dead” inflatable Martians. Either they wouldn’t inflate or leaked too quickly to use for the entire day. As of this report I’m hopeful we’ll be able to reuse and give away some of them, and send the rest to TerraCycle. Still not a great situation to have, and I hope it doesn’t repeat next year. And I could have used a magnet sweeper for easier pickup of all the safety pins the runners dropped in the parking lot.
Yikes!
Compost was up from 2025 but still well below 2024 and earlier, likely due to less food waste vs. the pancakes of previous years. Recycling was up by 25 percent (from 400 to over 500 lbs.), about half the increase due to cardboard and the rest from water bottles, waxed cups, and such. Landfill was also up slightly, but still below 10 lbs. and just about 99 percent landfill diversion. Discarded clothing came out about the same as last year, mainly sweatshirts, with some gloves.
And thanks again to the finish line crew for stacking their cardboard and bagging up their plastic wrap for us, and to the crew who depackaged the finisher medals and gave us the plastic bags and wrap they came in.
All in all, a long day but a very satisfying one!
Happy Planet Running 