Picture this: You are running a road race on a hot day. You make it to the hydration station, grab a disposable cup of water to pour over your head and another to drink, crumple both empty cups, and toss them on the ground. Right? Not anymore! Welcome to the Zero Waste Race Series!
This summer, Clean Water Action’s ReThink Disposable team went on the road bringing reusable cups and a portable water refill station to races and events across Connecticut. Our mission? Stop trash before it starts on race day, reimagine how these events operate, and get athletes and spectators to buy in.
With funding from the Rockfall Foundation and the Community Foundation of Middlesex County, we purchased a Clean Water Action water refill station to go with our in-house stash of reusable cups and water bottles. At each race, athletes saw a table of full cups at the hydration station, but with a twist – instead of trash cans, cup return bins! Their reactions were overwhelmingly positive.
“Runners and triathletes spend a lot of time outside and care about our environment. Every athlete I spoke to was enthusiastic about the switch to reusable cups. The immediate impact was less trash on race day, but the long-term impact is reimagining how we hold events like this. Connecticut is already running out of places to put trash and exports it to other states. Wherever it goes, burning and burying trash pollutes. We need to make less of it,” said Clean Water’s New England Regional Projects Manager Amber Schmidt.
What happens to the cups after race day? Clean Water partnered with The United Church of Chester to use their commercial dishwasher, so all the cups were washed, sterilized, and dried before the next race.
Thank you so much to the Cedar Lake Tri Series, the Killingworth Road Race, and Middletown Pride for trusting our Reusable Water Refill Road Show to provide their hydration needs! Thanks to our collective efforts, we kept thousands of cups out of the trash this summer. We can’t wait to do it again next year!
Learn more about our ReThink Disposable campaign on our website!
