Around the Crown partners with Charlotte shirt-maker to focus on sustainability

CHARLOTTE — Like any big event, a typical road race can lead to a lot of waste -- there are thousands of race bibs for the runners, the food wrappers and banana peels filling the trash cans at the finish line, and the paper cups at every water stop.

Brian Mister, the race director for Around the Crown, said he wanted this race to be different. Since its founding, he’s focused on making the event as sustainable as possible.

“I kind of came from the trail running world where it’s a little more natural not to want to throw paper cups down after a water stop,” he said.

Mister opted to use and recollect reusable cups instead and worked to plan a recycling and compost system for all food given out at the finish line. This year, the race is also partnering with CATS to provide free transit for runners.

Sustainability also played a role in Mister’s choice of race t-shirts.

An overlooked, but often major source of waste, the UN Economic Commission estimates the fashion industry accounts for about 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. A typical t-shirt can travel tens of thousands of miles, uses hundreds of gallons of water before it shows up in your closet. Then after it’s worn, 99 percent of the time, that t-shirt ends up in a landfill.

Adam Bratton, the marketing director for Recover Brands, said the Charlotte-based clothing company aims to be different.

“The idea with Recover was let’s use all those materials that are already out there in the environment,” he said. “Let’s use those to create new quality goods instead of using, you know, virgin materials.”

The company tries to keep its supply chain as local as possible to limit emissions and most of their shirts are made from recycled PET plastic, and another main ingredient is old shirts. The company collects back old shirts, breaks them down and turns them into yarn they can use to make new shirts. This is the process they’ve been using to make Around the Crown’s shirts for the past six years.

“If you look closely, you can actually see all the different colors in that shirt,” Bratton said pointing out the flecks of color in the fabric. “You can actually see those little flakes could theoretically be part of your previous shirt that you recycled.”

Recover will be at the Around the Crown Race Expo on Saturday to collect any t-shirts made from cotton, polyester or blended fabrics they can reuse again as a part of their 360 Closed Loop program.

Beyond the Around the Crown, both Recover and Mister are part of the Low Impact Alliance, a coalition of race directors, companies and others in the running industry working to reduce the carbon footprint of the sport.

“We kind of stick to our side of things which is events and help other race directors around the country figure out sustainability initiatives,” Mister said.

Since the Around the Crown started in 2019, Recover Brands reports they’ve made 29,812 t-shirts for the race. When compared to the typical shirt, they say opting for Recover has kept 238,496 plastic bottles out of landfills and prevented 361,620 lbs CO2 emissions, the equivalent of 380 barrels of oil.

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