Giving out freebies and selling merchandise will not cut it.
This is a follow-up to the previous post as promised.
Before the pandemic, I made this post illustrating the waste I encountered at a Standard Chartered Bank sponsored marathon, and questioned "why an event that is able to invest $100,000 in a winner, can be so wasteful."
Now that events are expected to run at full capacity in the UAE with eased Covid-19 restrictions, we need to look at the less wasteful alternatives available to the organizers of these events, and marathons are no exception. Recycling our way out of this is not an alternative. Nor is giving out reusable freebies or selling branded merchandise.
According to François Saunier of the International Reference Center for Life Cycle of Products, Processes and Services (CIRAIG), reusable cups would need to be used between a 100 and 250 times to make them "environmentally preferable to single-use cups," because of the resources it takes to make them and repeatedly wash them up.
So before we go online or to the store to purchase a reusable in order to fit in with the environmentally friendly crowd, expending emissions in the process, it would help if we consider alternatives we already own. While many of us can afford to look more environmentally conscious, most of us are not.
As an organization, we are looking to make reusables like the SpeedCup available for reuse by marathon organizers or runners in the UAE. What are your thoughts?