While the 20,000 runners expected at the L.A. Marathon have been vigilantly tracking their miles, Bruce Rayner has been tracking down eco-friendly portable toilets, corn-based biodegradable fast food containers and compost and recycling bins to reduce the event’s environmental footprint.
Rayner, a marathoner and triathlete from Boston is the founder of Athletes for a Fit Planet, a company that provides environmental consulting and ground support for events from local road races and charity walks to national Marathons.
The impetus for launching Athletes for a Fit Planet, Rayner said, took place in 2007 while he was competing in a race in Rhode Island.
“After the race I was handed a plastic water bottle, drank it, then looked for a recycling bin but there were none to be found,” says Rayner. “Trash cans were piled with garbage that could have been recycled and I realized that none of the races I’d competed in were environmentally responsible.”
He launched Athletes for a Fit Planet in January of 2008 and did self promotion that March at the Multisport World Expo at the M.I.T. in Cambridge. This year Rayner was hired to “green” the event.
Rayner has been busy over the past year. Among some of his clients: the Marin County Triathlon
in California; the Tri-Maine in Portland and the Westchester Triathlon in New York.
He’ll be covering the L.A. Marathon in May and the Nautica NYC Triathlon in August.
Rayner encourages his clients to become certified by The Council for Responsible Sport, a non-profit corporation that provides certification for sustainable athletic events. The Council enables event directors to incorporate environmental responsibility while informing consumers when these standards are followed.
Events adhere to principles set forth in five categories: Waste, Climate, Materials & Equipment, Community & Outreach and Health Promotion.
Requiring stringent standards, Rayner said, is the best way to avoid greenwashing, a term used when organizations disseminate disinformation in order to present an environmentally responsible public image.
“They can’t hide,” says Rayner. “It’s a vigorous process and it’s not easy.”
Fees run from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars depending upon the number of people participating in the event, the complexity, and whether the need is consulting or on-the-ground support at an event.
Examining a process begins with registration and can include transportation to and from the event; hydration stations along a course; recycling bins; food-including compostable cups and take away containers; toilets; and providing carbon offset information.
Rayner said that having success with recycling in large venues takes a lot more than putting out bins, but how they’re managed as even the most vigilant home recyclers have been known to stray at large public events.
“Bruce continues to inspire me and my staff to put sustainability efforts at the forefront of everything we do,” says Will Thomas, executive director and founder of Tri-Maine Productions, an executive event management company that specializes in Triathlons.
“Whenever we have questions or concerns, he’s quick to respond and provide more resources than we could possibly use.”
The most far-flung organization that Rayer has been asked to consult for was The Kenyan Triathlon Association, which was associated with The Nairobi Marathon that took place in October.
“It blows my mind that I have a relationship with this organization halfway around the world,” said Rayner.
Rayner himself has hop-scotched the globe, much of it on two wheels. He was born in Canada, moved to Mexico City, then to England, as his father worked for a British company that manufactured engines for commercial airplanes. From England the family moved to Delaware where Rayner attended high school.
Bruce Rayner
In November of 1974, he left the U.S. and spent his senior year in Australia, living with a family in Sydney through American Field Service. He returned to attend the University of Delaware where he majored in economics.
His first job was in Washington, D.C. with Data Resources, Inc., an economic forecasting company that worked with the Council of Economic Advisers, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Defense, providing them with data to help them with their modeling and forecasting.
A year later he returned down under as a tutor running support classes at The University of Adelaide in southern Australia. He came back to the U.S. in 1983 but wanderlust quickly set in and that summer Rayner led an American Youth Hostel bicycle trip from Boston to San Francisco.
When the trip ended he moved in with his parents, then in upstate New York, took a job as a carpenter and saved up enough money to cycle around the world for a year.
“I went from London to Poland, East Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, to Israel where I arranged to work on a kibbutz in Negev Desert for a year,” says Rayner. “I was considering continuing on to Asia, but I was beginning to get burnt out.”
Rayner returned to the U.S. in 1985 to attend Boston University’s graduate program in print journalism.
Over the next decade Rayner worked as an editor for such firms as Reed Publishing, PenWell, Tech Online, and CMP in Long Island for Electronic Buyer’s News Magazine. He’d also been consulting for a California-based company called Technology Forecasters, Inc.
“Around 2003 the European Union was doing a lot of work to try to get the toxic substances out of electronics such as cadmium, lead, and phthalates,” says Rayner. “That changed the manufacturing standards and in 2005 we launched a website called Green Supply Line, all about complying with regulation and being green.”
That, he said, was when he became involved with environmental issues within the electronics industry. It was around that time when Rayner participated in the Rhode Island event that changed his life’s course.
In the coming months Rayner will be using his venues to collect old bicycle helmets, shoes, and lightly-used apparel to distribute to underdeveloped countries.
“This is an opportunity for American athletes to become environmentally conscious and socially responsible,” said Rayner. “It’s fairly painless to give an old helmet or pair of running shoes.”
Main image: dotbenjamin