LOS ANGELES Sunday marks Loren Piretras 17th marathon. The avid runner is an official Los Angeles Marathon ambassador as well as a race-sanctioned pacer.
Running is the only thing I do that I can do at 100%. Its my time to sweat it all out, and its a powerful reminder of my own strengththat I can do tough things, Piretra said.
Piretra says that she has seen the waste produced by these events increase as she has raced more. After marathons, plastic bottles can be thrown out on the roads and trash can build up.
It is really hard to observe, I train runners, and I drill into them that items go in the trash bins, recycle when we can, and more importantly, reduce our impact overall, not taking on more than we need.
This year’s marathon is not just for the runners. Streets LA used electric trucks to set up barricades along the 26.2-mile route.
One of these EVs is not yet on the market. Streets LA has a preproduction version of the Roush Clean Tech Ford F650.
Greg Spotts is the chief sustainability officer and executive at Streets LA. He said that heavy-duty EVs can make a big impact on large-scale programs in Los Angeles.
Each of these events has a lot to do with transportation. There is a lot of trucking, and if we can reduce carbon emissions and pollution for the community, we can make it zero emission.
Streets LA made a concerted effort for more electric vehicles to their fleet, especially for city-wide events.
Spotts stated that we have more than 1,000 vehicles, of all types. Although some are not yet available for purchase, we want to be the first to pilot, borrow or rent them to drive market adoption.
Asics, official sponsor of Marathon Expo, was working hard to keep waste out the landfills. John Ealy, Asics’ category director for performance running, said that materials and displays were saved from previous events.
We want to help runners, but it can be very costly with all the marketing materials. Therefore, we try to reuse and recycle so it looks fresh and doesn’t hurt the environment by throwing it away after each event.
Some displays can be used year after year. However, billboards or banners with dates on them cannot be reused. Instead, they are repurposed. More than 2,000 bags were made using last year’s marketing materials. They were distributed with Asics purchases throughout the weekend.
Ealy stated that we want to make sure that we don’t throw away everything, but repurpose materials.
Piretra, a runner, said that she has directly experienced the effects of climate change. She ran through smoke from California’s wildfires and was increasingly hot.
She said that running has given her so much, especially in these beautiful locations. I just want to be kind and compassionate to the planet.
