Runners Turning Green

The Twin Lights Half Marathon In Gloucester had runners turning green, with the help of EcoMovement.

EcoMovement is a Portsmouth, NH based business that provides recycling, composting and trash services to businesses, schools and homes in the Greater Seacoast area of New Hampshire.

At Twin Lights, Rian Bedard of EcoMovement was there to help runners turn green. In the area where runners picked up their after race food and drink, he was there to help runners dispose of their waste in the proper container.

You will notice that the bucket for items going to the landfill is the smallest one.

For a race of this size, about 1,000 runners, Rian expected to have two bags of compostable material, probably six bags of recyclable materials and ONE bag of trash!

That’s right. With 1,000 runners and all of their “trash” only one bag would be non-recyclable, non-compostable trash. My neighbors put out more than that every week and there are only four of them!

An Eco Education

This is about as green as a runner and a race can get. All of the plates, utensils, napkins and un-eaten food went into the compost bucket. All plastics and cans went into the recycle bin. Items like PowerGel packets and containers with mixed plastic, foil and paper could not be recycled and had to go into the trash.

Rian said that about half of the people knew exactly what to do and the other half needed some assistance picking the right bucket. No one had any issue participating in the program.

Most people would not think that paper and plastic utensils can be composted. Paper is made of wood and some plastic utensils are now made out of corn starch or other compostable materials. You can buy these utensils in most grocery stores and compost them.

The organizers of Twin Lights gave runners the opportunity to go green and recycle or compost almost all of their waste. I am hopeful that other local race organizers will utilize this service so that runners in their races can go green as well.

EcoMovement offers their services to businesses, schools and residences in the Greater Seacoast area in New Hampshire. They also offer training programs for your company or school so that you can enhance your own recycling and composting programs.

We make choices every day. When a race organizer gives us the opportunity to have ZeroWaste we should take it. When a race organizer sets out barrels clearly marked “Recycles Only” we should be able to know what that means.

As consumers and runners we need to meet the businesses, municipalities and races half way and participate in the programs that they offer. In the grocery store and at the mall we can all make a difference by making better choices.

I salute Twin Lights and Pursuit Racing for providing this service to us runners, and the environment.

Let’s make better choices.

* The only compensation received from EcoMovement was a breath of fresh air!

© 2013 anagelin