Littering

[Zerak-Tul]

Slightly amused that people are worried about the environmental impact of a sport that promotes RIDING YOUR DAMN BIKES INSTEAD OF CARS.

Good grief, tempest in a teacup..

 

[dgodave]

Well, it works for dogs!

>> Reuters article

Holy crap. You werent kidding.
.

 

[L'arriviste]

Slightly amused that people are worried about the environmental impact of a sport that promotes RIDING YOUR DAMN BIKES INSTEAD OF CARS.

Good grief, tempest in a teacup..

Of course I recognise your point. There is nevertheless always room for improvement. Some sports, like F1 for example, have more room than others.

For my part, all I'm saying is that, if we can do more, we should do more.

So why not add a yellow, open-top trashcan/bin to the back of the Mavic or timekeepers' motorbikes? If it's wide enough at the rim, the riders can just slam dunk their junk.

(thanks to VeloNews)

 

[dgodave]

Good grief, tempest in a teacup..

is that like a brouhaha in a bidon?
.

 

[scribe]

Frankly, gathering and disposing of bottles during the race is only gonna create unnecessarily dangerous conditions for cyclists. Better to let the cyclist finish the bottle and get it clear of other cyclists the way they do it now. I believe gel packs and packaging should go into the cyclist's jersey, as they are very difficult to gather later.

 

[9000ft]

The promoters of all the MTB races here have a strict anti littering policy. If you are caught littering you get DQ'd and will not be welcome back. I usually ride the race courses to pick up trail markers that he sweepers miss and whatever litter there is and there is remarkably little litter after races even if they have 700+ riders. Granted, MTB racing is a lot different from euro pro racing but I don't think it would be that big a deal for teams to take a "pack it in, pack it out' policy. A pain in the *** perhaps, but not impossible. In the least, a race should have some sort of a litter pick up plan.

 

[Archibald]

Of course I recognise your point. There is nevertheless always room for improvement. Some sports, like F1 for example, have more room than others.

For my part, all I'm saying is that, if we can do more, we should do more.

So why not add a yellow, open-top trashcan/bin to the back of the Mavic or timekeepers' motorbikes? If it's wide enough at the rim, the riders can just slam dunk their junk.

street-sweeper styled attachments to the underside of the team cars at the rear??

 

[JA.Tri]

The promoters of all the MTB races here have a strict anti littering policy. If you are caught littering you get DQ'd and will not be welcome back. I usually ride the race courses to pick up trail markers that he sweepers miss and whatever litter there is and there is remarkably little litter after races even if they have 700+ riders. Granted, MTB racing is a lot different from euro pro racing but I don't think it would be that big a deal for teams to take a "pack it in, pack it out' policy. A pain in the *** perhaps, but not impossible. In the least, a race should have some sort of a litter pick up plan.

Yes, a right royal pain but yes "pack it in, pack it out". Aside: sometimes the disposal of bidons/musettes results in an impact on subsequent cyclists with (very occasionally) disastrous outcomes.

 

[cyclopeon]

Thanks for the responses to my post. It's good to know that bio-degradable bottles are now being used and I think banning riders for life is a little extreme for a littering offense.
However, the sight of empty bottles being thrown away, apparently, with no regard for the environment, surely gives a very poor impression, to a TV audience, of a sport whose reputation is already at an extremely low ebb.

Personally, I don't have much of an issue with the bottles; people collect them for souvenirs or reuse.

But all the bits of wrappers and gel packs-- that's the stuff that blows around with a wind and causes a real eyesore. And it's really zero weight and zero volume for a rider to keep in a pocket. Senseless.

 

[Cal_Joe]

To put it into perspective, at any well attended race I have ever been to the spectators leave much more trash than the peloton does.

 

[craig1985]

Yes, a right royal pain but yes "pack it in, pack it out". Aside: sometimes the disposal of bidons/musettes results in an impact on subsequent cyclists with (very occasionally) disastrous outcomes.

It might be difficult whilst in the peloton, but the guy in the break doesn't have much excuse IMO, and can just hand the empty bottle back to the car when he goes to grab another bottle.

 

[L'arriviste]

To put it into perspective, at any well attended race I have ever been to the spectators leave much more trash than the peloton does.

Yes. Twenty tons of it on the Mont Ventoux after the anticlimax stage in 2009:

 

[9000ft]

Yeah, No doubt the places where there are lots of fans, especially when they are overnight, camp out, drunken party scenes are going to get trashed. Who, if anyone is typically in charge of clean up at those places? Do the race organizers have volunteers who clean up? Does it fall on the local authorities? Does it not get cleaned up? Interesting (if you care about such things) behind the scenes stuff at a race.

But anyway, back to the racers themselves. Regardless of he piggishness of the fans, it wouldn't hurt for the teams and organizers themselves to set good examples.

 

[L'arriviste]

Yeah, No doubt the places where there are lots of fans, especially when they are overnight, camp out, drunken party scenes are going to get trashed. Who, if anyone is typically in charge of clean up at those places? Do the race organizers have volunteers who clean up? Does it fall on the local authorities? Does it not get cleaned up? Interesting (if you care about such things) behind the scenes stuff at a race.

The task generally falls to the local authorities: what will cost the locality in the short-term is good for the local economy in the long term. Villages like Malaucène, Bedoin and perhaps Mormoiron (where I've stayed) will gain at least financially from the sustained touristic boon of being in the shadow of the great white.

I think that, if pro-cycling can be a flagship for green (rhymes with 'clean') sports, then it can go well beyond the basic idea of human-powered machines and start to innovate in other ways.

 

[scribe]

Yes. Twenty tons of it on the Mont Ventoux after the anticlimax stage in 2009:

I can see where hillbillies descend from.

 

[Ferminal]

Surely the race organisers can do something about it where there are big groups of fans like stage finishes and popular climbs. It's unrealistic to sweep 200km of the route but if you look after the hotspots that would clean up the majority of fan related rubbish.

Maybe this is the case already?

I guess the difference in cycling, especially in the bigger tours is that the locations bid for the race to come to them, rather than the race organisers paying a rent to use the location.