Zero-wasting the Monster Dash

I was contacted in September by Lindsay, a lead volunteer with Team Ortho, organizers of the Monster Dash 5K at Lake Harriet. She was looking for help with setting up recycling and composting to reduce the amount of waste at the race. Lindsay, Felicity and I traded lots of e-mails back and forth talking about logistics in the weeks leading up to the race Oct. 29, and then I was there on race day to help out.

The race had 3,000 participants -- and 250 dogs registered! It was a really nice day, and everyone looked so festive in their costumes.

An awesome waste-station volunteer.

Lindsay, left, is the champion behind the race's first recycling/composting effort. After working so hard at the YWCA triathlon, I was so grateful to just be a regular volunteer while Lindsay was in charge of all the zero-waste logistics!

I cringed when I saw all the food for the racers was in plastic bags, but we did capture a good portion of the bags for recycling.

And they're off!
Chip bags, which I'll send to TerraCycle for recycling.

Compostables
Lindsay standing by two big bags of plastic bags collected for recycling.

Composting and recycling carts lined up to be picked up by the city of Minneapolis. Here're the stats:

bottles and cans: 21.2 lbs

plastic bags/film: 15.8 lbs

chip bags/candy wrappers: 2.9 lbs

cardboard/paper: 122 lbs

compostables: 134.5 lbs

trash: 33.1 lbs

for a diversion rate of 90 percent!