Most runners can be forgiven if the environmental toll of discarded cups isn't top of mind while getting some much-needed water or Gatorade during a race. Fortunately, entrepreneur Kristina Smithe is the one-in-a-thousand person who went down that rabbit hole.
The Associated Press profiled Smithe and her company, Hiccup Earth, which is providing a more sustainable way for races to hydrate competitors than disposable cups. Smithe's epiphany occurred at the 2019 California International Marathon. Her back-of-the-envelope math indicated that the 9,000 runners likely used and discarded a whopping 150,000 cups.
"I was just shocked that, even in California, it's not sustainable," Smithe recalled to the AP.
Smithe's company addresses the core issue of these cups — that is, their use of plastics. Some cups are entirely made of plastic, while others are mostly made of paper and feature a plastic lining.
Either way, the cups don't biodegrade quickly and are costly from a resource perspective. On the front end, production generates pollution, and on the back end, they can clog up landfills with additional planet-heating pollution. They can also leak worrisome microplastics that can end up in our bodies and in the world's oceans.
After Smithe's experience, she developed a reusable cup made out of silicone that ticks the boxes for runners by being lightweight and pliable.
First operating in a race in 2021, Hiccup Earth now stocks 70,000 reusable cups that races can rent for a fee. Smithe has been known to drive over the cups herself in 17-gallon tote bags. She told the AP that her pitch to race directors, who almost exclusively use disposable cups, is simple: "If you're looking for a sustainable solution, I have one."
The company has spared over 900,000 disposable cups from a trip to the landfill through the 137 races where she's provided her cups, per Smithe's estimates. Smithe brings branded bins for easy disposal on site and collects the cups after the race.
The washing process is also efficient, with a load of 1,500 cups in her proprietary dishwasher requiring only six to 10 times the water of an average efficiency dishwasher load.
It does cost race directors a little more, per the AP. Hiccup cups go for 15 cents apiece until the volume exceeds 10,000, while disposable cups can cost just a few cents.
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No way 👎 There is hope on the horizon to close that gap, according to plastic waste expert Sarah Gleeson of Project Drawdown.
"The scalability is there," Gleeson told the AP of solutions like Smithe's. "I think in general, high adoption of these kinds of solutions is what is able to bring costs down and really maximize environmental benefits that you could get."
Another important thing to remember is that while the scale of plastic pollution is immense and daunting, Smithe's initiative for cups used in races is both inspiring and impactful. Gleeson labeled disposable cups as a "pretty visible" example of it, and a major generator of plastic waste.
"It's just a solution to a problem that's long overdue," Smithe concluded.
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