Sustainability - Around the Crown 10K

Five Is Greater Than Fifty

Around the Crown 10K is one of the country’s most sustainable running races and we strive to get better each year. Each year during Labor Day weekend, Charlotte’s inner beltway changes it’s speed limit from 50mph to 5mph for a few hours. It doesn’t seem like long, but we hope during this time people realize that five really is greater than fifty. Numerically – no. For our speed and quality of life – yes. Slower is better. We can stop and take things in, appreciate it’s beauty, and see the cause and effect.

We think about this a lot when we make decisions around food diversion, product procurement, and partnerships around this city. We’ve listed a few of those choices below, but we know there’s so much more we can continue to learn and act on in this industry. Join us on this journey to take many steps, but leave only foot prints.

Our Sustainable Actions

SUSTAIN CHARLOTTE

Since 2022, we’ve partnered with Sustain Charlotte as one of our beneficiaries and look forward to working with this amazing team for many years to come. They are the leading voice in the Queen City when it comes to forward thinking and accountability from our local government on the subject of sustainability. They will continue to hold us accountable on race day and throughout the year.

FOOD COMPOST

Crown Town Compost are the hometown heroes that help our Finish Festival look even better by reducing waste from all of our food from Harris Teeter at the finish line. They have allowed us to compost our food from our events every year and this year is going to be no different. After the event, we’ll load up all of their bins to take to their composting facility just outside of I-277.

LOW IMPACT ALLIANCE

We are a proud founding partner of the Low Impact Alliance (LIA) which is a global organization advocating for a more responsible running industry. Our goal is to promote transparency and ecological sustainability from both brands and retailers, while inspiring runners across all communities to become their own voices of change. Let’s leave our city, our state, and our earth better than we found it!

LOCAL WATER

The Queen City has amazing water and we’re utilizing it. Charlotte Water is present at the finish line each year providing fresh, cold, clean water filtered straight from the hydrant. We also use aluminum cans of Aquafina thanks to our partnership with Pepsi at the finish line!

You’ll also see our brand new Water Monster’s getting used to help with even less waste this year!

CUP-LESS EVENT

This is not a new idea in the running community, but it is new at this scale. Our trail brethren have been rocking this for years, but it’s time us roadies bring it into the mainstream and end the waste. Both of our water stops utilize reusable rubber cups from Hiccup that are washed and sanitized after each race and prepped for the next one. You’ll operate the water stop just like what you’re used to except with zero waste!

RECYCLED SHIRTS

Our race shirts are 100% recycled from 8 plastic bottles and produced by local apparel company, Recover Brands. Essentially, we’re not using water bottles, and we’re repurposing those that have already been used in the world. The easiest way to put it is that we’re closing the loop of sustainability all through running a few miles around this beautiful city.

And yes, because they’re local, we’re crushing our carbon footprint in one more way thanks to you. Between our shirts for the race, volunteers, and merchandise, we were able to divert a total of nearly 200,000 plastic bottles saving over 275,000 lbs of CO2 emissions since working with Recover in 2019.