We’re doing our best to minimise our environmental impact. and use of single use plastics. Below you’ll find a list of what we’re doing currently.

Going Cup-less
During 2026 we are transitioning to fully cup-less events. We will have a limited supply of uncoated paper cups during the transition period and we’re selling collapsible TPU cups on our website.  We are also encouraging people to bring reusable cups for hot drinks with them if they plan to get drinks from any of our event caterers.

Since 2022 we have used paper cups designed to be fully recycled back into high grade paper. They look and feel exactly the same as conventional plastic coated, or PLA coated cups – The key difference is that these cups are actually optimised to be recycled back into high grade paper using conventional paper recycling equipment [Paper mills do not need to change or invest in new machinery]. This supports a circular economy where the valuable cup paper fibre can be recycled many times.

Swims hats on request
We will continue to supply swim hats for our open water triathlons as brightly coloured hats really help the lifeguards track swimmers in the water. You are welcome to keep your hat after you’ve taken part in one of our events but if you already have enough hats please just leave it in transition or hand it in at the registration desk & it will be carefully washed & reused at a future event.
For pool triathlons we’re now supplying our excellent Silicone swim hats to our novice categories & on request to people who need one. This helps reduce our environmental impact. We know some regular competitors already have far more hats than they could possibly use.

Finishers Medals Now Optional
We know that quite a lot of competitors are not interested in finishers medals. This creates a lot of wastage so from December 2022 finishers medals are optional. Competitors can say no to a medal when they register & we will donate £2 to our chosen charity, the local cancer charity thebikenetwork.org

No dates on t-shirts & medals
We know it’s nice to have the date on an event you’ve done but it creates a hell of a lot of waste. Similarly with medals we don’t date them. We do date the ribbons though, with the year, which means you’ll know at a glance what year you did the event.

Avoiding Single Use Plastics
For our triathlons at Torbay & Tavistock we’ve used plastic barrier tape in the past to mark out the run routes. Going forward we’re aiming to mainly use 5mm line (see picture below) plus stakes & arrows. There are issues with ensuring line is clearly visible to competitors with poor or limited eyesight so some limited use of barrier tape may still be required.

One race number
We used to supply two race numbers for all our triathlons & duathlons (one for the front & one for the back). However as most people use Race Belts so we now supply one number to reduce wastage. We usually don’t supply helmet numbers for the same reason. Our ‘Search by Selfie’ photo feature does a better job of finding people’s photos than a helmet number does. If you don’t want to purchase one of our race belts,  we will hand write one of our blank numbers for you with a marker pen that you can display on your back for the bike leg.
Left over race numbers are used as numbers for our monthly Swim Bike Run events which helps keep the cost down to just £5 to take part. Incidentally we have looked into fully recyclable paper race numbers but currently there are none available that are able to stand up to the vagaries of the British weather. So for now we’re sticking with Tyvek, as used by virtually all race organisers. Tyvek, from Dupont is made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) so is at least a fully recyclable plastic.

Rubbish separated into categories
We have multiple bins at our events to make it easier to separate paper, plastics, cans & compostable waste.  Please help us by putting your cans/banana skins/plastics into the correct bins and save us the dirty job of sorting the job the following Monday.

Zip Ties, signage & waste
We only use reusable zip ties. All our arrows and other signage are reused for other events. We minimise our use of single-use plastic and sort rubbish from our events into the relevant categories for recycling. For our cycling events we now supply waxed string instead of zip ties for attaching event numbers to the front of bikes. It’s a tad more fiddly but does reduce our use of plastics.

Left Over Food
We go to town with the food we provide at our feed stations at our Cycling Events.  And any left over food is taken to the HITS foodbank in nearby Newton Abbot. This also applies to the finish line snacks at our running races, triathlons & open water swims.

Reducing Car use
In Devon where most of our events take place this is easier said than done. However at some of our events we now offer a £5 discount to anyone who commits to walking or cycling to the event. We’ll be looking to add this to other events in the future.

Race Packs
We use A5 manila envelopes for our race packs. Any uncollected packs or envelopes left at our registration desk are reused for future event.

No free T-shirts
For 2026 we have phased out free t-shirts at our events. Shirts significantly impact the environment through massive water consumption, chemical pollution from dyes and pesticides (especially for cotton), high carbon emissions from production and transport, and microplastic shedding from synthetics during washing, all exacerbated by the fast fashion cycle leading to enormous landfill waste. The life cycle involves resource depletion, energy-intensive manufacturing, and pollution from raw material cultivation to final disposal, making textile production a major environmental stresser.
Going forward we are only offering t-shirts made of organic cotton or tech t-shirts made from recycled polyester. These will be an additional cost which ensures they only go to people who really want them.

And finally
Bear in mind that you can do your bit for the environment by taking part in local event events like ours instead of flying off to where the weather is sometimes warmer. A return flight to Spain generates 150kg to 400kg of CO2 per passenger. Of course we totally understand if, once in a while, you still want to jet off somewhere…

Suggestions?
Do you have any other suggestions for what we can do better? Let Us Know