The annual Liberty Festival was held last weekend at Heritage Park in Canton, which includes the morning run put on by RF Events. Runners of all ages enjoyed 5K, 10K, or one mile of healthy exercise before heading off to consume “fair fare” with its attendant boatloads of calories. And HPR was there to add a good shot of “green” to all the red, white, and blue.
Like in previous years, we set up the main Zero Waste station near the start/finish line, and a satellite station on the far side of the registration tent. We covered one park trash can by a crosswalk and put an All Waste box there.
Grace and Cole showing how much fun it is to collect other people’s trash.
Total waste was consistent with the past two years, with cardboard, and cups from the water stops the biggest contributors. Compostables were way down, mainly due to not serving bananas this year. Made sense, with the Heritage Festival and all its food choices within easy walking distance. We didn’t even receive a large number of snack and cookie bags. (Not complaining.) And once more, we had only about a baggie’s worth of landfill, consisting mainly of tape and shreds of things.
One perennial mystery is the higher than normal level of water bottles left on the grass instead of being taken to the waste stations. As part of my effort to reduce this, I even created and put out the following poster:
Did it work? Not entirely, as I still picked up a fair number of abandoned half-consumed water bottles. If they were all located in one area, I’d put a box there, but they were scattered here and there. Still might put out some additional satellite stations next time.
No complaints, though. Things went smoothly enough I could sneak in a bit of professionally assisted stretching courtesy of Pryde Athletics & Physical Therapy. Didn’t get a photo of my suffering, but here’s one of PAWS, the Detroit Tigers mascot, getting some work done.
Thanks to Cole and awesome volunteer Grace for their help. Another successful event!
Happy Planet Running 