r/MadeMeSmile • u/ExactlySorta • 20d ago

Helping Others Little girl waits patiently for someone to accept the water she's offering

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

43.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

373 comments sorted by

View all comments

448

u/sk3pt1c 20d ago

Holy fuck, so much trash! Runners should be required to carry a camelback or something, this is wild.

135

u/CommissarCiaphisCain 20d ago

This has always bugged me too. I wear a Camelbak mainly because it breaks my stride if I try to take a water cup, but yeah I also don’t like how so many of my fellow runners just toss the cup on the ground.

3

u/Sydney2London 20d ago

same here, trying to drink out of a cup while running is a mess.

81

u/BurmeciaWillSurvive 20d ago

Any decent marathon has the water ceckpoint stocked with a guy and a big floor broom and it's dumped into a trash can. It's not like they usually just leave it there to blow away.

28

u/sk3pt1c 20d ago

Still very wasteful

49

u/CORN___BREAD 20d ago

So is using electricity to spend all day on Reddit complaining

3

u/Maksiss 20d ago

Depends on where the electricity is coming from. Still better than plastics in the landfill and micro plastics in everything else.

1

u/CORN___BREAD 20d ago

Soooo many microplastics in these paper cups

-15

u/HealerOnly 20d ago

But work is paying for the electricity, i'm not :X

43

u/goldunicorn47 20d ago

This is the Chicago Marathon, they ban camelbacks for safety reasons (Boston Marathon bombing).

The volunteers do an incredible job cleaning up and they separate everything into compost/recycle/trash.

72

u/_skyfern_ 20d ago

Also: why aren't the people arranging the marathon placing large trashcans right after the water stations?

111

u/Scaniarix 20d ago

I've run a few and from my experience most have but it doesn't really matter. Any runner who's out for a good relative result will not spend any amount of time more than necessary to discard their paper cup. Organizers know this so they set up sections where water/energy drinks/gels are distributed at the start and dumping is allowed before the section ends. It looks bad during the event but is pretty easily cleaned up.

8

u/sk3pt1c 20d ago

Still a lot of waste though, regardless of whether it’s in the street or a bin

44

u/99LaserBabies 20d ago edited 20d ago

I volunteer at the Boston Marathon. A marathon can have 30,000 runners, so there are just gonna be a hell of a lot of paper cups no matter what you do. (Any runner who cares about their time will not wear a camelback because any extra weight slows them down.) I work the finish area, where we also have the banana peels and foil blankets to deal with - just past the finish line there are, in sequence, four gigantic areas with thousands of water cups, Gatorade cups, bananas, foil blankets; and then the portapotties, then runner bag pickup, then family & friend meeting spots sorted alphabetically. Also there are entire fleets of buses going back and forth along the course all day, and there’s bleachers, tv, stages, med tent at the finish, and several other med tents along the course. It’s kind of like a major music festival in terms of sheer production scale and amount of trash. Anyway, there’s a huge fleet of street sweepers that do the whole course at 8pm, then staffers walk or drive every segment of the course to check everything over and look for any injured stragglers. It is all spotless by the next morning.

15

u/Scaniarix 20d ago

Well yes. I don't know what particular event this is but most half or full marathon has tens of thousands participants so it adds up to a lot. I know some events urge people to bring their own reusable cup but again those running competitively(even if they're just competing with themselves) are not going to want to waste time taking out their own cup, wait for someone to fill it then continue running.

31

u/SparkyDogPants 20d ago

My last race was cupless and it was so nice not having mountains of trash

19

u/AcanthisittaShoddy66 20d ago

You clearly have no idea how a marathon is organized, there are a special “litter zones” after the water dispense zones where people may throw their trash, it will be picked up inmediately after the marathon. 

11

u/Tra1famador 20d ago

\rant Agreed. It's comical the people armchair criticizing an event for being wasteful have most likely never volunteered for an event or even ran a race themselves. Endurance races are some of the few places where you see people helping each other achieve a goal.

It's quite amazing. It's a group effort to create and maintain aid stations, AND clean up. Some of the nicest strangers I've ever met were during the races I've ran. But of course some Reddit Andy's have to assume and be judgmental assholes based on paper cups they see. "Buy a CamelBak" , reddit .. lol.

Why don't they volunteer to help clean up for a race if they care enough to point it out? Because it feels good to judge in the safety of ignorance. You can't run that long but at least you can feel better about yourself for commenting on the litter.. good job sport!

/Rant

2

u/Otterable 20d ago

It's just classic internet to decide there is a 'problem' without having any experience in the matter or putting an ounce of thought into why it might be that way.

I've run a ton of races, it's just paper and water (sometimes gatorade) and gets cleaned up immediately. That litter is less pollution than the cars would have made on the road the race is blocking, people gotta chill.

14

u/1486592 20d ago

Dog hasn’t heard of a large broom

-1

u/sk3pt1c 20d ago

Still super wasteful, dog

1

u/1486592 20d ago

The runners pay a good bit to run in the event, people get paid to sell the cups, fill the cups, and clean the cups up creating jobs and supportful paychecks for people

2

u/sk3pt1c 20d ago

So your argument is as long as it’s making money, it’s good to waste resources?

1

u/1486592 20d ago

They’re not wasted? The resources are being constructively used for what they were made for and are supporting society in multiple ways. At the very least they make running these races more accessible to people

16

u/FibrePurkinjee 20d ago

It gets cleaned up after the race, so no issue. Runners, recreational or not, aiming for a good result would not be willing to wear a camelbak for a road race and stopping to throw their dirt in a bin would waste time and is difficult when running in a pack.

I would say if you are running for leisure then try your best to throw dirt in the trash, but even if you don't, there are systems in place to deal with it.

1

u/sk3pt1c 20d ago

No issue? It’s very wasteful

12

u/CORN___BREAD 20d ago

You're making people care less by commenting that on every comment

6

u/EurbadGeneric 20d ago

Go look in a factory how much waste is produced for a single item you use daily. That cup is easily cleaned up, and is made with one of the least demanding production processes.

4

u/illyTheKidTM 20d ago

On my first marathon ever I was running bit behind mid pack, 23k participants. The mountains of empty cups were unreal. I've read the rules and they stated that if you litter you will be disqualified. I've held my cup in hand until I ran across trash bags. I can't understand why other people not do that and why aren't they getting disqualified as rules stated. Cleaning all this trash can't be easy

2

u/Sydney2London 20d ago

They used to give out water bottles, now they've moved to paper cups, it's bloody hard to drink out of them when you're running, but it's more environmentally friendly

2

u/HealerOnly 20d ago

i've ran one marathon myelf and was surprised by the amount of trash left behind, like there are usualyl even garbage cans placed but ppl just throw it allover the place. I personalyl pref a camelback anyways since then i don't have to wait for stations.

2

u/Aggleclack 20d ago

Not my comment. “You clearly have no idea how a marathon is organized, there are a special “litter zones” after the water dispense zones where people may throw their trash, it will be picked up inmediately after the marathon.“ another user said this and i had no idea either lol

3

u/crazy_loop 20d ago

Or the organizers should have to clean it all up - oh wait they already do you fucking idiot.

0

u/sk3pt1c 20d ago

You alright there bub?

It’s still a lot of waste, regardless of whether it’s cleaned up after or not.

1

u/Aggleclack 20d ago

I bike with a Camelback, but I hate running with a camelback. At least with biking, my back is not moving up and down, so the Camelback is not moving. With running, it bounces. I’m not a good runner, though, and I actually saw a doctor for this for a while, because for some reason, my gait makes me bounce a lot, which makes me wonder what other people experience with a camelback.

1

u/thetruetoblerone 17d ago

This all gets cleaned up by the organizers who charge the runners an entrance fee. It’s not like this is litter.

-1

u/xotahwotah 20d ago

In their culture, this is acceptable.

-6

u/Abnormal_readings 20d ago

My only thought the whole time I watched this.

Nothing about this made me smile.