Responsible Racing

We know that racing can sometimes be less than environmentally friendly: the cups! the trash! the individuals driving to race morning! All of this adds up, and as our race grows, we know the potential for our environmental footprint to grow with it. Adding runners means more cups, trash, and cars driving to our race. We hold our responsibility to lessen the environmental impact of our event on race day extremely high, and we work on it year-round. 

With Sustainability being a pillar of our mission (along with Charlotte and Inclusivity), this year we’re highlighting what we do to put our money where our mouth is, and want to share that with you all. 

1. Waste Reduction: By minimizing waste through comprehensive recycling and composting programs, we’re reducing our waste. Participants are encouraged to use reusable water bottles, we have Hiccup Cups on course. 

New this year, we will even have an entire team of volunteers who will lead us through recycling during our expo and on race morning. Our Green Team, powered by Recover Brands, will be stationed at various locations on race weekend to help educate and execute!

2. Eco-Friendly Materials: Once again, we’re excited to partner with Recover to produce our participant shirts from recycled fabrics. Beyond that, the rest of our apparel coming from Brooks is consistently lessening their footprint with sustainable materials and business practices. Coming back in 2024, we’re using reduced sizing race bibs through our partner Start2Finish cutting our paper waste in half! 

3. Financial Support: By supporting and promoting local partners whose job it is to promote and incite change in the sustainability department, we share some love and money! We have two beneficiaries to whome we have donated over $25,000: Sustain Charlotte (who focuses on trying to change current unsustainable land use patterns by advocating for growth that focuses on walking, biking, running and public transportation) and Carolina Farm Trust, (who works alongside farmers, growers, markets and consumers to strive to make our region a global leader in sustainable food production and consumption while ending food deserts).

4. Transportation: Our event promotes the use of public transportation, carpooling, and biking to the event to reduce carbon emissions. We will again have Bento Move available to hold runners’ belongings, allowing them to take these modes of sustainable transportation easily to the expo and Mint Street on race morning. 

New this year, we have huge support from Charlotte Area Transit System: each runner can use their race bib to ride CATS light rail or bus with a free 2 day pass during race weekend. Much more on this to come– we want this to be the year YOU ride public transit to the start line, and are going to show you just how easy it is to do so. 

5. Education: We know that in order to remain sustainable, we not only need to practice what we preach, we need to continue to find others with the same values to help spread the word. 

New this year, our Panel Discussion will focus on Sustainability. Bill Johnston, Founder and CEO of Recover will moderate talks from local and national experts on sustainability at the Expo starting at 1PM:

Keep it up

Do we want Charlotte to run Around the Crown for 6.2 miles on race morning? Of course! What we’d love even more is for our runners, volunteers, and partners to continue those steps toward a more sustainable city throughout the year. We lead by example and love that you are following along.