This year’s Ann Arbor Marathon, put on by Epic Races, started out cloudy and cool and turned into a sunny, warm afternoon. Perfect for runners, spectators, and a certain other population that wasn’t exactly welcome to the Green Team. But we had a job to do, so we soldiered on!
Over 2,000 athletes showed up to run the 5K, 10K, half marathon, full marathon, or relay, and all that energy was contagious. A good thing, because we needed every ounce of it for what lay ahead.
The morning crew carbo-loads. From left: Linda, Han, Payrav.
As usual, we set up the main Zero Waste station in the post-race vendor area near the food tents. A second station went up at Ashley and Washington, between the finish line and the vendor area. I decided to put two staff there, to oversee it and the All Waste boxes we placed near the finish line Water Monster and on top of city trash cans nearby. I added an All Waste box at Ashley and Liberty at the start of the finish line chute, as it’s a popular place for spectators. A table with All Waste boxes was also placed at the far end of the parking lot to cover people exiting west.
The food tents got an All Waste box and one for disposable gloves, and as they were next door, they could place their collected cardboard directly behind our station.
We faced two big challenges. The morning rush began around 10:00, and we were continually slammed for two hours as the 5K, 10K, and nearly 1,000 half marathoners finished and loaded up with well-deserved food and beverages. The two staffers at the Ashley and Washington station were busy the whole time bringing full boxes to the main station and taking empty ones back.
Where did all these people come from? Oh, right…
When the rush finally subsided, in the afternoon came the water stop bags – and the yellow jackets, who had finally stumbled on the incredible stash of carbs just sitting there for the taking. Though some miracle nobody got stung, but it was pretty hairy getting everything packed up and loaded at the end.
The afternoon team takes on the bags. See how much FUN this is?
Total waste was up 50 percent from last year – wow! A good part of that was due to capturing all the water stop waste this time (see below) but based on the rush, extra food and drinks consumed as well. Details:
- Compostables actually decreased by weight, likely due to the pizza boxes being clean enough to recycle instead.
- Recycling totals nearly doubled, including four 96-gallon carts of waxed cups weighing nearly 300 pounds. (For those of you scoring at home, that’s 9,000 cups, more or less.)
- Landfill more than doubled from 17 lbs. to 40. Some was due to the increased total waste and some from the water stop “residuals” (non-standard recycling) being so messy it would have taken hours more to go through.
The two loads of water stop bags and scrap cardboard.
We recovered more than 95 percent of all we collected, and for an event of this size and duration, I’m satisfied!
Discarded clothing was down from the previous two years (and we broke our streak of finding bathrobes), but we still ended up filing a large box. They will go to The SunBundle, who collect clothes and shoes to give to college students who can use them.
Good news and improvements:
- Last year the final load of water stop bags arrived late, and due to a miscommunication they ended up being thrown away. This year I asked if they could come earlier. They all arrived in time for us plow through them. (My staff and volunteers continue to leave me awestruck with what they can do.)
- The extra station at Ashley and Liberty picked up a good amount of race waste that in previous years has ended up in the city trash can there.
- No “rogue trash can” discoveries at the end this time, and as usual we left the streets cleaner than we found them, by picking up litter during the event and doing one final sweep at takedown.
Opportunities for further improvement:
- The afternoon volunteer shift needs both to be larger, and end later. The afternoon volunteer shift ended at 3:00, and my team had to stay until nearly 5:30 to get everything processed, taken down, and loaded.
- Find a way to cut down on one-time disposable cups. Options include giving out flexible silicone cups to the runners as swag, encouraging runners to reuse their finish line cups until they leave, and/or using a service like Hiccup Earth at the water stops, which will drop off and retrieve reusable cups for an event.
- The volume at the Ashley and Washington station was high enough to make presorting there feasible. This would mean putting 96-gallon carts there for recycling and cups which could be sorted right there instead of bringing full boxes to the main station. This would cut down on the volume the main station needs to sort during the rush.
Many thanks, as always, to my terrific team – Abby, Bridget, Han, Linda, and Payrav, and the volunteers who stepped in to break down cardboard and sort water stop bags. Special thanks to my friend Sue, both for her incredible bag-sorting, cup-stacking skill, and for providing her pickup truck to hold all the cardboard.
That’s a wrap! Great job, team! From left: Yours truly (Jeff), Abby, Linda, Sue, Bridget.
All said, a successful event on a wonderful day, rush and yellow jackets notwithstanding. All the same, I’m grateful we have a break until Halloween!
