UTMB week is about to commence over in Chamonix valley and around the Mont Blanc Massif. We're going to look at what will be the race weeks biggest single-use waste issue, energy gel, chew and powder packets.
We spoke about banning reusable cups in trail and ultra running, but why have we never discussed what is the biggest issue of waste we create from races? The packaging that holds small amounts of sugar and carbohydrates?
A single 100km mountain ultra can generate thousands of these wrappers and packets in just one event. We head off into nature and create waste to consume a small amount of sugar every 30 minutes.
If a single runner from UTMB CCC, which has over 2,000 competitors, takes one gel, chew or energy powder every hour and finishes the race in 20 hours, a mid-pack finish time, that's 40,000 single-use energy gels, chew and energy powder powders that are used just once and then binned after, potentially ending up in landfill.
Next week, during UTMB CCC, there will be a minimum of 40,000 single-use packets used for a 20 hour race.
This is a conservative look at this race, as most runners will take a gel or chew more than once per hour, usually twice, sometimes as often as three times per hour and can finish in upwards of 27 hours, 7 more hours beyond the average finish time.
We could make the claim here that this one race contributes closer to 80,000 single-use gel and chew packets to landfill.
And a gel packet is often made up of at least 4 and as much as 8 layers of plastic and foil types, making a single issue, a multi-faceted one.
And CCC is just one of six races that week.
Using last year's actual field numbers from UTMB, and the same conservative method, one gel, chew, or powder per hour, based on the midpoint of each race's typical finish time, here's what one week in Chamonix looks like:
| Race | Distance | Participants | Typical finish range | Avg. hours used | Packets (conservative) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ETC | 27km | 1,331 | 1.5–5 hrs | 3.25 | ~4,326 |
| MCC | 40km | 1,200 | 4–9 hrs | 6.5 | ~7,800 |
| OCC | 57km | 1,567 | 5–14 hrs | 9.5 | ~14,887 |
| CCC | 101km | 2,127 | 10–27 hrs | 18.5 | ~39,350 |
| TDS | 148km | 1,935 | 20–45 hrs | 32.5 | ~62,888 |
| UTMB | 174km | 2,492 | 20–47 hrs | 33.5 | ~83,482 |
Add those six races together and you get roughly 212,733 single-use gel, chew, and powder packets, from one week, in one valley, using the most conservative possible assumption: a single packet, every hour, per runner.
Double that for runners fuelling twice an hour, and you're closer to 425,000 packets in a single week, almost half a million single-use energy gel, chew, and powder packets. At 3g each, that's well over a tonne of waste, made from multi-layered, laminated plastic and foil that can't be separated and recycled once heat-bonded or glued together.
We haven't even got into the price of fuelling from these packets, which range from £1 to as much as £3 per serving.
Half a million packets, and not one running media site has called it a problem yet.
But there are solutions to these issues, of which we discuss in great detail over on our sustainable fuel guide here.