Littering during running events

lawred2

PhilOssophy wrote: »

Dublin was a complete mess after the Dublin marathon and still along the route, there are still bottles, energy gels, etc (where they are not covered up by leaves only to be discovered in Spring).

What should/can be done about it? I appreciate that there often isn't enough/big enough bins provided along the routes, I've also seen people throw bottles into/over ditches, etc in running events before.

Is there enough education here, i.e do people realise that sometimes you have to carry a bottle for a few minutes after you finish but you will eventually come across one?

Or should there be some form of undercover "litter warden" and if people are seen littering (you have their identity from their bib) they should be fined or something, just like littering any other day of the week?

Couldn't be expecting personal responsibility now

bucketybuck

strandroad wrote: »

It doesn't need to be complicated.

But it is complicated, the fact that it takes only half a second to think of a dozen simple questions and their implications demonstrates that quite clearly.

I mean, saying that somebody should film the route, then disqualify runners with a public announcement! Sure, its a nice thought, but get any part of that wrong and you could easily end up in court for GDPR breach or maybe defamation.

Its easy to throw out soundbites about what should be done, far harder to do something about it in the real world.

The Davestator

Could do something like the time penalty in Ironman races.

If volunteer sees someone littering, they simply show them a red card and that person is then disqualified and does not get to finish the race.
Or it could be a time penalty, but that would not bother some people who are just out to finish a race.

lawred2

bucketybuck wrote: »

But it is complicated, the fact that it takes only half a second to think of a dozen simple questions and their implications demonstrates that quite clearly.

I mean, saying that somebody should film the route, then disqualify runners with a public announcement! Sure, its a nice thought, but get any part of that wrong and you could easily end up in court for GDPR breach or maybe defamation.

Its easy to throw out soundbites about what should be done, far harder to do something about it in the real world.

could just tell people to stop acting like scumbags and look after their own waste.

strandroad

bucketybuck wrote: »

Its easy to throw out soundbites about what should be done, far harder to do something about it in the real world.

Triathlons do it and have for a while so it's clearly doable!

robinph

strandroad wrote: »

Triathlons do it and have for a while so it's clearly doable!

But don't you have a smaller and far more dispersed field by the time you get to the run in a triathlon (of any distance) than you would even at mile 23 of a marathon as "small" as Dublin for example.

You can have motorbike marshals spotting people drafting, or dropping gel wrappers from their bike on the way round, or even have marshals during the run spotting the runners dropping bottles outside of a designated area.
How do you do that on a road race though where the width of the entire road is taken up with runners for the entire distance? Other than setting up a load of video cameras and chip timing mats for the entire distance of the course the individual runners are not identifiable in the middle of the road in a mass participation road race.

Now you can have small races hand out warnings and DQ's where it's easy to identify people throwing stuff into fields and such like and hope that that education filters it's way into the fields in bigger road races, but if you are handing out 1 million bottles of water during the course of the likes of London Marathon then the organisers just have to accept that not every bottle is going to make it into the bins setup 50m past the end of the water station and have more bins and clean up crews organised.

As much as I'd like to be able to aim a bottle at the bin on the side of the road, it's not always possible to get the aim right whilst also running at pace, and throwing the bottle over the heads of the 50 other people between me and the bin.

PhilOssophy

robinph wrote: »

As much as I'd like to be able to aim a bottle at the bin on the side of the road, it's not always possible to get the aim right whilst also running at pace, and throwing the bottle over the heads of the 50 other people between me and the bin.

Excuse. Where there's a will there's a way

scoobydude

At the Clonakilty event over the weekend the water bottles at all the stations were biodegradable. Now I know there is a responsibility on the participants to not litter, but at least the gob****es who feel the need to fling the bottle into the adjoining hedges and fields aren't doing too much damage

average_runner

PhilOssophy wrote: »

Excuse. Where there's a will there's a way

Most races dont ask you to get it in a bin, they have a dumping area. That's good enough.

Sadly you will always get people who will not behave, same in all forms of life.

Stark

scoobydude wrote: »

At the Clonakilty event over the weekend the water bottles at all the stations were biodegradable. Now I know there is a responsibility on the participants to not litter, but at least the gob****es who feel the need to fling the bottle into the adjoining hedges and fields aren't doing too much damage

Different levels of biodegradable. Some things are marked as biodegradable, but will only break down in any sort of reasonable timeframe in an industrial composter. Most "biodegradable" plastic substitutes fall into this category.

Banana and orange peels for example, take about 2 years to biodegrade in the open air.

bucketybuck

lawred2 wrote: »

could just tell people to stop acting like scumbags and look after their own waste.

Sure, just tell people not to do it. That always works.

robinph

PhilOssophy wrote: »

Excuse. Where there's a will there's a way

Yes, it is an excuse. But if you want to get 10,000 half empty bottles of water into bins then you provide more bins over a longer area rather than threaten runners with a DQ for not queuing up at the one bin they bothered to place 50m after handing out the bottles.

PhilOssophy

robinph wrote: »

Yes, it is an excuse. But if you want to get 10,000 half empty bottles of water into bins then you provide more bins over a longer area rather than threaten runners with a DQ for not queuing up at the one bin they bothered to place 50m after handing out the bottles.

I don't know about you, but I've never had a problem finding a bin in any running event, be it a local 1/2 marathon or the DCM. But maybe I just want to find a bin more than I want to find an excuse.

Limpy

Imagine Kipchogie and Bekele are neck and neck in the Greta Thunburg Marathon, Kipchogie makes a move with 5k to go, the world record is about go by 20 seconds, kipchogie takes his last Maurten Gel and throws away his wrapper, an eagle eyed steward from boards.ie records his number and reports him. He is disqualified and Bekele takes the Win. Well done steward, that will teach him.

plodder

bucketybuck wrote: »

Sure, just tell people not to do it. That always works.

It's the usual starting point though. Or at least tell them what they should be doing.

The Davestator

Limpy wrote: »

Imagine Kipchogie and Bekele are neck and neck in the Greta Thunburg Marathon, Kipchogie makes a move with 5k to go, the world record is about go by 20 seconds, kipchogie takes his last Maurten Gel and throws away his wrapper, an eagle eyed steward from boards.ie records his number and reports him. He is disqualified and Bekele takes the Win. Well done steward, that will teach him.

The Greta Thunburg marathon:D:D:D:D