Sustainability

We are committed to delivering sustainable races around the world, reducing our waste and taking responsibility for our environmental impact in every city we run.

We continually review our practices across the global race series to ensure our events are as sustainable as possible. Here’s how:

Saying no to plastic water bottles:

One of the biggest wastes at running events are plastic water bottles. But we run ours differently. We have successfully removed all single-use plastic bottles from all of our races and replaced these with alternatives such as premium branded reusable bottles, refill water tanks, canned or boxed water cartons that are made from recyclable, biodegradable paper.

To put this is in perspective, that’s over 15,000 plastic bottles that are no longer being used at our races.

Ditching plastic packaging:

We’re going beyond eliminating just plastic water bottles and are working with our suppliers to try and ensure that all finisher t-shirts, race medals and other event premiums are not individually wrapped in plastic.

We’re working closely with our catering suppliers to avoid or significantly reduce the number of plastic items used in our food packaging. Where possible, plastic cutlery is being replaced with wooden or compostable alternatives, and food packaging is being changed to 100% recyclable or compostable materials.

Reducing waste through recycling:

Food

In cities where food is widely composted, we will provide dedicated food waste/compostable bins in our Race Villages with clear instructions for use, so our runners can help us to be more sustainable as well where possible.

Recycling and Dry Waste

We will provide a number of different recycling and waste bins at our races where available to try and ensure the waste is separated properly and can then be recycled and reused correctly at a local waste management facility.

In Mumbai, we worked with local sustainable waste management charity, Skrap, who helped us to ensure that over 96% of our event waste was reused, composted, donated or recycled.

Branding

Working closely with our suppliers, we ensure all possible branding is collected and reused for future events.  Where this is not possible, these items are recycled by our supplier.

Runner Medals

The participant medals for 2023 will be consciously made from metal, and the lanyards made from bamboo.

Offsetting our emissions:

In order to operate our races and maintain the high-quality event experience we are responsible for transport, logistics and power emissions. We are committed to reducing our emissions and increasing efficiencies.

For our 2022 global series, we have offset our carbon footprint from our core team travel to the race events through the Gold Standard to benefit the Buenos Aires Renewable Energy Project, tackling deforestation in Brazil.

Going local:

Since the beginning, we’ve been committed to using local suppliers for all our needs whenever necessary.

We've asked that our local caterers are providing runners with as much high-quality, locally sourced food as possible.

Making a social impact:

We are also proud to support the cities that we run in through The Extra Mile, our charitable programme that gives runners the opportunity to give back to their local community.

The Extra Mile addresses unique social challenges in communities where we live and work, through three philanthropy pillars: Education, Public Health and Social Justice & Equality.

The Bloomberg Square Mile Relay donates a total of US$390,000 across our 13 race city locations, with US$30,000 going to each of our Race Community Partner charities.

This is our commitment to making the world a better place. One race at a time.