More and more runners and race directors are looking at ways to produce environmentally friendly events. Some are being super creative such ass the Urban Wildland race in August:

We are proud of the fact that the Urban Wildland Half Marathon & 5K is a no-waste event! All natural refuse (food scraps), paper, and plastic materials used for the race will be recycled, reused, or composted. In a strong effort to curb our society’s growing waste stream, we are dedicated to leaving no waste from the event. Special compostable cups, napkins, and food scraps will be transferred to a compost site after the race, where they will decompose into soil within a matter of months. All plastic water bottles will be recycled.

We still tend to drive solo to weekend long runs or races, but as gas goes up more and more runners are carpooling – or finding some other way to get there. Nevertheless, running shoes have always been a major downside when it comes to truly green running.

Lets face it the manufacturing process and materials used to create the bread and butter of running use a lot of non-“green” resources. One company is taking a step in the right direction. Which company? Yup, Brooks. They are turning their MoGo technology into BioMoGo.

Brooks introduces the first-ever biodegradable running shoe midsole: BioMoGo. Yes, we’ve taken the long-lasting cushioning of our original MoGo midsole and made it environmentally friendly. How, you ask? We’ve added a non-toxic, natural additive to the MoGo compound that encourages anaerobic microbes to munch away once it hits the landfill. Traditional Ethylene Vinyl Acetate™ (EVA) midsoles can last up to 1,000 years in a landfill. BioMoGo’s microbial munch rate is a staggering 50 times faster, biodegrading nutrients into reusable byproducts within 20 years! That means that within 20 years time, Brooks alone will save 29.9 million pounds of landfill waste. For you pigskin fans out there, that equals 1,277 football fields covered one shoe deep!

Look for BioMoGo to make its debut in the Trance™ 8, on store shelves July 2008. What about our other performance running shoes? All Brooks performance running shoes with MoGo midsoles will feature groundbreaking BioMoGo by the end of 2009.

They have developed a list of links that will help you learn more about the shoes, which I’ll include for your reading pleasure:

• Read more about BioMoGo
• Watch the BioMoGo video
• Check out our BioMoGo FAQs
• View images of biodegrading MoGo and BioMoGo
• Consider The Life Cycle of a Running Shoe

This is a good first step and I applaud Brooks for taking the effort and I’m sure they’ll continue to do research and improve their products.

[tags] Green, Brooks, BioMoGo, Environment [/tags]