Sustainability | Camino Ultra

SUSTAINABILITY POLICY

At Camino Ultra, we aim to provide an entire event experience that protects the trails and environment that we get to enjoy as part of our day-to-day running

Our London-based events have a proud history of collaborating with partners who have established themselves as leaders in the running x sustainability space - The Green Runners, Trash Free Trails, ReRun and Hylo Athletics.

We hope that, in presenting our policies here, we will continue to be transparent about 'where we are' against our values and importantly 'where we strive to get to'

Local

Local Environments and Community

Camino Ultra was created by several East London ultra runners to provide coaching and events for our local community. Our vision was always that the UK already had some of the best ultramarathons in the four corners of Wales, Scotland, Lakes and beyond - however London was an underserved community and we wanted to express the core theme by The Green Runners 'that it is reasonable to do a race a year that includes long travel but that there is a growing need to seek and promote local events that can be accessed by easy local/public transport'.

Over 75% of entrants in all Camino events live in the same London postcodes where our events start and finish.

Travel & Transport:

In keeping with our local values we always ensure that all our events can be reached by public transport. With the recent introduction of the Elizabeth Line network and the TFL overground investment there are even more transport options. We acknowledge that some people wish to come to our events from further distances and whilst we encourage train and coach options we have been successful in supporting 'car-pooling'. We would always ask our Camino community to contact us via our info@caminoultra.com address to see how we can help you in the planning.

Support Local Companies:

We are proud of the fact that almost all of our resources come from local suppliers. We often collect these items ourselves via public transport (if too heavy to pick up via foot or cycle). If you are London locals and wish to collaborate with us then please do get in touch.

Reduce & ReUse

Food & Beverage:

Since we began all our events have been 'cupless'.

We use, clean and reuse our own containers to serve our water and sports electrolyte drinks.

We use as many packageless companies and products as possible - We have reduced the amount of items such as sports gels and instead we use a Hackney based supplier 'Ali Noor' to make fresh batches of energy balls - Vegan and with no packaging required.

Camino Races:

Tees: Since our very first event we have partnered with Trees Not Tees - offering our runners an alternative to any of the T-Shirt or Medal or Finisher Bags that we have ever offered.

We partnered with ReRun Clothing to make a Camino Ultra stamp and we encourage our community to keep their clothing in use by offering and promoting restore products like Pair-Ups and by gifting our runners Camino Sew-on Badges to fix rips and tears.

With our Green Runners Policy we are no longer offering free tees at any of our races. Tees are an optional purchase. This enables us to ensure high quality fabrics, design, and appropriate sizing for both male and female bodies.

Waste & Recycling

In 2024 we were inspired by Darren Evans to promote the reuse of milk-cartons to our race entrants. We shared a pre race video Darren made of how to re-use a milk carton as a fold-away seeable drinks cup in the event. We are proud to say that several Caminos did do this.

Respect Our Trails

Trash Free Trails

Since 2022 we have partnered with Trash Free Trails. Each year we have proactively take part

in their Spring Clean Project. Camino design a new London based trail and we take a full calendar month to break up the project into three sections:

(i) 10 days where Camino community run the new trail and catalogue the areas where there is trash

(ii) 10 days - including Camino Run Leaders versions - of cleaning the trail 'One Bag Clean Up'

(iii) Final days where new Caminos record the final status of the trail

Signage

Camino races take place in areas of natural beauty and in all our events we partner with local organisations e.g Canal & River Trust, City of London Epping Forest.

We are mindful that industrial red and white plastic tape is not Camino want to be using in our events (it is often seen left on our trails by other events) - so we had some hand-made signs completed which are generic so that they can be used in all our events - year after year.

We also know that temporary signs are tampered with and often dumped - so we always put up our signs at the very last moment and have a dedicated team that remove these on the same day of the event

Education

Camino are a diverse community that include runners of all ages from all backgrounds. One of our core values is that everything we do can and should be an opportunity to share knowledge and skills so that we equip others to lead safe and enjoyable runs on clean trails.

In order to do this we must ensure that our events have clear and up-to date packs which include our sustainability policy - so that volunteers know how best to host their section of our events and these skills can be transferred into events that they host in the future.

In order to educate ourselves we collaborate with companies who lead in this space and we will ensure each year that we attend educational events to know how to improve what we do