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Running Green
Welcome to Good Dirt Radio… reporting on positive solutions taking root.
Sporting events have many variables that must come together on a single day: athlete numbers, on-course support like port-a-johns and cups for water, medical stations, wireless communication devices and the ubiquitous t-shirt. It’s no wonder that greening such events is a challenge. Yet somewhere in the piles of safety pins, microchips and reams of race printouts, there’s a green revolution taking shape.
We caught up with some of the nation’s race directors at “How Green Is Your Event,” the Road Race Management-sponsored seminar in Washington D.C., to see how these large-population sporting events are approaching the issues of greening their organizational efforts. David Deigan is the Chairman and CEO of AFM, Inc., producer of Heatsheets, the wrappers that many runners wear after a marathon to help retain their body heat.
David Deigan: We’re a vendor, and our product is one of the most prominent products at the finish line of long distance events, especially marathons. I just happened to be finishing up helping with Chicago a couple of years ago, I noticed there were three or four dumpsters piled with our product; I looked at it and I was really shocked. So we started trying to figure out what we could do to change our impact on the industry, and we felt that for both economic and just ethical reasons that we needed to start taking actions to find ways to overcome that.
Toward that end, they work with a solid waste management company that's willing to collect the material at the finish line. Heatsheets are recyclable and can be made into gift paper, signage, park benches and police barricades. It’s even been used as insulation in the makeshift shelters built to house earthquake victims in Pakistan.
For Jill Anderson of the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge, who stages road running events in six countries on five continents, the impact of greening the event can only be positive.
Jill Anderson: There’s so much more we can do. I’ve learned more about other ways we can proceed with our greening effort so it’s something fresh and different every year; people don’t think it’s just the same old, same old, once-you-do-it-you’re-done. Things like collecting all the plastic bottles that are left from the event—how one race has taken them and turned them into fleece clothing, which can be race branded and given to families or children that need that clothing—so here’s a way we’re making a positive impact on our community as well as helping the environment.
For Jim Balcome of the Manchester Road Race in Manchester, Connecticut, the captive audience represented by a group of runners provides the perfect branching tree for a green message.
Jim Balcome: I represent 10 – 12,000 runners, 20,000 participants, so on a given day, I really have somewhat of a control or an impact on 30 to 40,000 people in my community, and if I’m a leader and I tend to address the issues of ‘green,’ that information’s really going to get filtered out to a lot of people, who in turn may talk to a lot of people, so even though we may think that we’re just one small group we really can put our fingerprints on a lot of people.
Going green at a racing event is no small endeavor. Jeff Darman of Road Race Management feels the time is now, but he cautions that sustainable efforts need to be seen in the bigger picture.
Jeff Darman: I think there’s, at least among the people in this room, a real desire to make a difference and a desire to put their time, their effort and their money and their sponsor’s money, into it. But I think they also recognize although there’s progress made, it’s an uphill battle, and education is a key component of it, that it’s not going to happen next year or the year after –but it’s a five-year or ten-year task.
Keith Peters, of Eco-Logistics, sees a trend across the sporting event industry.
Keith Peters: There’s a great movement afoot to reduce the carbon impact of sporting events. Just as more and more people are becoming familiar with the threats of global warming, so are race directors becoming concerned about the tremendous side effects of the events they stage. And they are taking positive steps to reduce that environmental impact.
And the reduction of damage to the environment could be substantial.. With a growing number of sporting events taking steps to go greener, the behavioral change is catching on . If you're a participant or spectator of events, we urge you to choose issues you care about and get involved Please visit gooddirtradio.org for more information.
As we become more educated, we can find healthy green options for choices we make every day. We urge you to embrace sustainable choices in the areas that you care about.
I'm Tom Bartels and I'm Tami Graham. Thanks for joining us on Good Dirt Radio, digging up good news…. for a change.
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