LEAVE NO TRACE

LEAVE NO TRACE

I think every race I’ve ever been at I notice a handful of athletes toss their nutrition wrappers or water cups on the course, outside of an aid station area. I’m always a little surprised when I see it. One race I actually stopped, picked up a gel pack thinking the runner in front had dropped it. Only to realize it was empty and they had tossed it. Granted there are plenty of people throwing garbage out of their car windows and we may not be able to have an immediate impact there, but we can do our small part.

I think living in paradise and a coastal community; you assume everyone is hyper sensitive to what is happening to our water ways and ocean. Every year 8 million metric tons of plastic goes into the ocean. 2 billion people within 30 miles of the coast create 100 million metric tons of coastal plastic. If you were wondering, a metric ton is 2204 lbs. Every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic goes into the ocean. From the tiniest plankton to the largest whale, plastic impacts nearly 700 species in our ocean. (https://oceanconservancy.org/trash-free-seas/plastics-in-the-ocean/). These are some staggering statistics! Ocean Conservancy is a pretty cool organization committed to cleaning up the ocean. They along with volunteers across the world have collected more than 220 million pounds of trash from the world’s beaches.

4Ocean (https://4ocean.com/pages/our-story) is another amazing organization committed to cleaning up the oceans. We first found them from a Facebook post and video. They are actually a local company based out of Boca Raton and Deerfield Beach Florida. I love this company! They sell these really cool bracelets made from recycled plastic from the ocean. With every purchase of a bracelet, it removes one pound of trash from the ocean. In less than 2 years they have removed more than 629,000 pounds of trash from the ocean and coastlines. 

Some pretty cool companies are doing some amazing work. I think what’s so hard to wrap my mind around is, this is just 2 companies collecting so much trash from our beaches and ocean, and there are many more, and they cannot collect it all! It’s just crazy to think about.

So what does this mean for us? Carolyn and I started taking a look right here at home. We put on several races each year and never once have we gone back through the course and checked for trash in the neighborhood. We rely on the volunteers and assume everything has been picked up. Also, we started thinking about races and participants. Is it possible that athletes just assume someone is out there picking up during or after the race? Under normal circumstances they wouldn’t throw out a gel or nutrition wrapper on an everyday run. Is it possible it’s become acceptable during a race?

Down To Run (DTR, http://www.downtorun.com/about-dtr/) does several trail races each year. All of their races are Leave no Trace. Which means, you pack it in and you pack it out. Leave nothing behind. If you’re caught littering on the course, you can be disqualified. We liked this idea a lot. So beginning with our Fleet Feet Furnace 5K, August 4^th, that will be our first Leave no Trace Race. The idea is not to penalize participants, but to get people to think about their water cups and nutrition wrappers at every race they go to.

We think this is good on multiple levels. First there’s the obvious and secondly, a lot of residence find it intrusive that a race is even going through their neighborhood. I’m not sure I understand the logic there, but why give them another reason to frown upon these great community events.

The whole issue of metric tons of garbage on our coastlines, ocean and streets all seems very daunting and like this massive undertaking. It’s probably how these small companies that are collecting felt when they first started, but it didn’t stop them. We’re going to take it one nutrition wrapper at a time. We believe this effort will pay off and bring awareness to the athletes in our community. Hopefully everyone will do their small part and this will lead to big changes.

Please do your part when you’re out enjoying this wonderful paradise we all share and love. I believe If everyone is aware and makes the effort, we can have a very powerful impact.

Stay safe, happy and healthy. We’ll see you out there.

Edgar