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Communication # 3 (Feb 14th)
Tips for ‘Green’ shopping
As you start to plan your shopping for the race, you have to think about both eating healthy and taking care of the environment. We have a couple of tips/suggestions:
Use cloth bags as much as possible, including the bags that you will be given during registration for any last minute shopping and to take things with you as they are reusable. Try to always use bags such as these and refuse plastic bags.
Before you buy anything, ask yourself if you really need to purchase it. There is the chance that you may already have that at home or a friend, family member or neighbor may have it.
Avoid buying any products that have a lot of wrapping paper or plastic and/or any material that cannot be recycled such as tetra pack or Styrofoam.
Before you leave, remove any unnecessary wrappers or wrapping paper and try to use smaller containers in order to avoid carrying around rubbish and take up space. This can be applied to any type of material and food that you will take with you. If possible, precook food to save space and avoid plastic and other wrappers.
Before buying anything, consider the fact that the same product may be purchasable in glass or other reusable material.
Use batteries that can be recharged o buy lithium batteries that last longer.
Try to buy local products as much as possible using less energy when you buy and also considering the energy that was used to pack it and transport it to where you purchase it. Buying local produce guarantees that you are eating fresh food and increases the benefits and resources of local workers.
Although it is usually more expensive, we recommend that you buy organic products and products with the green seal which guarantee fair trade. It is both good for you and the people who produce these products.
Waste Disposal
Plastic is not assimilated by nature; it is a sub product of petroleum which is not renewable, it covers drains and causes flooding, it is highly contaminating, especially for water sources and animals that confuse it with food and die after ingesting it. Paper and cardboard are produced from tress which leads to deforestation and uses of a massive amount of water. On a worldwide scale, about 4000 million trees are used each year to produce paper but by recycling a ton of paper, 17 trees are saved. By recycling plastic and paper, we save our natural resources and contaminate less. This means that recycling; saves energy, water, raw material, time, money, effort and leads to a smaller impact on ecosystems and environmental protection.
Due to these reasons, during registration, the Pachamama Foundation will give each team to cloth bags. One of them will be blue – for plastic – and the other green – for paper and cardboard – as these are the material that will be used the most and that take up more space. We ask that you give these bags to your support crews as they will be the ones most involved with the waste disposal, as such, these bags will be part of the obligatory material for each support crew. The members of your support crew must separate any and all plastic, paper and cardboard, clean it and place it, squashed and dry in each of the colour bags, depending on the material. Once each bag is full, someone from your support crew must approach the Pachamama Foundation vehicle where they will find separate containers for the items they need to dispose, they must keep the bags. These vehicles will be present at each campsite and will be clearly marked. This activity should be repeated as many times as needed and whenever the bags are full. Organic material, that which is not paper or plastic, is the support crew’s responsibility. This needs to return to Quito after the race where you need to dispose of it correctly or placed in appropriate containers the may be provided by the communities along the way. The people in charge of each campsite will be able to provide more details. It is FORBIDEN to leave rubbish at the campsites and transition zones, any team whose support crew does this will be penalized as stated in the rules. The people from then Pachamama Foundation will not accept any material which is wet or dirty.
Also, the Pachamama vehicle will have a recipient to collect any used batteries. We urge you to use this recipient for all the batteries used during the race.
Team GPS and Support Crew GPS
During registration teams must present a GPS which marks coordinates in UTM. The GPS must be fully charged and should show coordinates UTM in the datum WGS84 the moment that it is requested by the Organization staff. A GPS that does not show these coordinates will not be accepted by the organization.
Support Crews can take a GPS with them in order to orientate during the route. The organization will provide a disk with a GPX file with the ‘tracks’ and ‘waypoints’ for the Support Crew’s route. These disks will be given out before the prerace Briefing at 15h30 in the Eugenio Espejo Convention Centre.
The Huaira Moment
Don’t forget to pack your photo and filming cameras with fully charged batteries. Everyone is allowed to film and photograph during the race and to share these with us after the race. The chosen photos and clips will be aired in the production by Fox Sports Latin America. The quality of the shots doesn’t matter, we encourage used to capture ‘The Huaira Moment’.
Short Courses during the race
During Huairasinchi Chevrolet, there will be a series of cut offs that will apply to both the Elite and Adventure categories. These cut offs will mean that teams will be forced to skip part of the route with the help of their Support Crew and the Organization to regroup with the rest of the teams and the race. The location of these cut offs will be specified on the route book with instructions of where the teams should go if they do not arrive before the cut off. If any team does not follow these instructions, they will no longer be considered in the ranking. Only the teams that comply with these places and instructions to reconnect to the race will continue in the ranking after the teams who were able to complete the entire route.
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