The first ever Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon, held in four of London’s Royal Parks on October 12, lived up to its aim to be as green and environmentally friendly as possible by having runners’ plastics drinks bottles recycled back into food grade plastics at the Closed Loop Recycling plant in London.
More than 130,000 bottles were distributed to the 12,500 runners during and after the 13.1 mile race, including 120,000 specially designed 330 ml PET water bottles donated by Marks & Spencer. Closed Loop worked with event organiser Limelight Sports to ‘close the loop’ on the waste containers and recycle them back into rPET suitable for use as plastics drinks bottles and other food grade plastics packaging.
The bottles were collected from the course, emptied of residual water and delivered to the company’s plant in Dagenham, which is claimed to be the first facility in the UK to recycle PET bottles back into food grade material, in addition to HDPE plastics bottles.
