Plastic cups at races

[Fellwanderer94]

Hi,
This is my first post on the forum so I hope this is ok...

I've done a few of the bigger fell races now in the Lakes and the Peaks as well as a load of mountain marathons. I've absolutely loved the fell races, however one thing that I can't always help but notice is the amount of plastic cups used during and after them. It seems that there are stacks of them at water points then at the end even more, plus there's normally another set of disposable cups for tea and coffee. None of these are normally recyclable, and in a field of around 300, if each runner uses one cup on the course, one at the end for juice then another for a tea, this is nearly 1000 cups used by the end going to landfill! If this happens at every race through the year, fell running as a sport is surely producing a lot of landfill waste.

I was wondering if this has ever been discussed before- I couldn't find any previous threads on the forum (although I might have missed it). With the new plastic bag tax people are now used to bringing their own bags to the shop; could there be a push to get fell runners to bring their own mugs/water bottles to races? It seems that people normally stash a jumper or something at the end anyway so they could bring a mug for tea, and if you have a bottle you can normally pick water up on the course, or fill that at a water station instead of a disposable cup. Or any other ideas? In the grand scheme of things is it an issue at all?

One thing I really feel is that this should be an issue for runners rather than race organisers who have enough to worry about already!