Earth Day Run Highlights the Ways Grandma’s Marathon is Sustainable
DULUTH, Minn. — As Grandma’s Marathon gears up for the big race weekend in June, they held a fun run on Sunday for Earth Day, to not only get runners out and help them train, but also teach them the ways that grandma’s stays sustainable through marathon weekend.
“Events themselves are pretty inherently unsustainable just with a lot of single use items,” Alivia Nelson, Program Director for Grandma’s Marathon said.
Grandma’s Marathon wanted to hold a training fun-run in honor of earth day to get runners out, and remind them individual ways to stay eco-friendly during their run.
Grandma’s has a few built in-sustainable approaches they take during the weekend, such as using water from hydrants or trucks to avoid plastic use, and setting up green stations around the course for recycling, but they also think through the transportation that brings runners to the start line.
“All the runners are required to take a bus to the start line or a train which helps a ton with vehicle mileage and we’re excited about cutting down our carbon footprint,” Nelson said.
The water stations build up a lot of trash, as runners take what they need, and discard their cups on the ground. A new partnership this year with hiccup a silicon re-usable cup, is helping them reduce that waste. At mile 9 in the marathon, these cups will be out for runners to grab and discard like they normally do, but the cups will be sanitized and re-used.
“In a usual year we put out half a million cups on the course to service our runners and so hiccup doesn’t half a million cups in stock yet but we’re going to be renting 26,000 which will keep a ton out of landfill,” Nelson added.
Good Will also will collect “throw away” clothes that runners discard ahead of their run, and the aluminum blankets post-race will be recyclable, to encourage runners to discard them properly.
For more information on these sustainable ways, or the training fun runs, head to Grandma’s website or social media pages.
