Environmental

The New Forest is an amazing and unique place. We’d like to do our bit to make sure it stays that way for generations to come. We are proud to be endorsed by the Environmental Agency who have recognised us as a model of best practice for sustainable events in the UK. We are delighted to have our work feature in various publications and hope that our efforts can serve to help others create events in an environmentally conscious way.

ORA Events (Organisers of the New Forest Marathon) were recognised for creating one of the first ‘Plastic Free’ events in the UK called Rock to Rock. This event raised awareness of ocean plastics and was supported by Surfers Against Sewage, Tidal Revival, The Beach Guardians, The Wave Project as well as global brands such as Finesterre. This created a blueprint for all our other events and continues to shape our daily work.

The New Forest Marathon Team is committed to being as environmentally conscious as possible. Here are some of the things we do to be green:

Raising awareness about The New Forest

We hope by running through the forest you will see for yourself how stunning the forest is and naturally respect it! To help you see how special the forest is, we erect ‘Forest Fact’ signs throughout the routes, so you might learn a thing or two during your run! We also dedicate 4 pages of our New Forest Marathon digital publication to raising awareness about the New Forest. We work with Forestry England to ensure this information is accurate and reflects their core values.

 

Plastic Free Drink Stations

100% of our drink stations are plastic free! We use cardboard cups rather than bottles. Cups are hard to run with, we encourage all runners to drop their cups on the floor inside the drink station zone, anyone seen dropping ANY rubbish outside these zones are disqualified. This allows the clean up teams to really focus on the area ensuring it is clean and that no harm comes to wildlife who will pass after the event. We provide cups on the finish line which can be refilled as many times as you wish free of charge inside the Race Village from our many drinking water points.

 

No Gel Packs

Our energy stations are stocked with an energy drink distributed in cardboard cups so no nasty plastic gel packs are left on the forest

 

Carbon Footprint

Our equipment is sourced locally using New Forest companies where possible. The Race Village takes about 7 days to build, we source electric vehicles from a local supplier, especially designed to leave minimal footprint from its tyres to help up with all the hard work! We put on a shuttle bus service from the train station in Brockenhurst, so people do not have to drive, and we also have our very own bicycle park. We take time to develop a build plan for the Race Village that minimises supplier journeys. We even use flasks on site to prevent re boiling the kettle multiple times!

 

Recycle Bins

We have special recycle bins throughout the forest so we can deal with your rubbish properly. Sometimes its not what you use, its about what you do with it afterwards that has the biggest impact. Inside the Race Village we have a big recycle bin. We encourage all visitors to use this so we can ensure that plastics brought to the event are responsibly transferred to recycling.

 

Electric Vehicles

The NFM team is now fully powered by electric! We have swapped our daily vehicles for electric, as well as our 4×4 Gators that we use to build the event village and course. This minimises our carbon footprint as well as reduces noise pollution, a welcome factor in sensitive habitats. It also means we can continue operating earlier in the day/ later in the evening without disturbing wildlife or campers.

 

Paperless

As technology evolves, we have transferred pen and paper to digital platforms, This no only keeps our desks clean but reduces waste too!

 

E Goodie Bags 

We have recently swapped to e-goodie bags. This reduces our carbon footprint by bringing less product to site, as well as allowing us to offer a wide range of offer great deals to our runners that cross the finish line!

 

Supporting Ukraine 

We have recently partnered with New Forest For Ukraine allowing us to make use of any left over items in a place where they are needed most. This includes donating over 2000 old event T shirts to Ukrainian families.

 

Away from the event

Away from the event we are proud to become a beta tester for ‘The Green Data Hub’. This work analyses the entire business allowing us to continuously make improvements to our every day work, ensuring we are as sustainable as possible.

 

Help

If anyone has any ideas how we can improve, we’d love to hear from you! This planet is special and the New Forest is a pocket of the world that is so unique. Therefore, anything we can do to make the event better and greener, we will definitely investigate!