Location: Bern,
Switzerland
On Saturday,
May 12th 2012, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the
desire to run my heart out as I saw more than 25,000 people put on their
running shoes and start covering a distance which is also referred to as the 10
most beautiful miles in the world. The course is weaving through the UNESCO
World Heritage city of Bern and
guides the runners past historic buildings, along beautiful and narrow alleys
and over bridges connecting the historic and the modern part of the Swiss
capital which are naturally divided by the river Aare.
Besides being not the easiest track to run along due to its gradually ascending
and sloping hills, the course is as scenic and diversified as it can get which
annually attracts thousands of visitors from Switzerland, Europe and the world
and invites them to take part in the Grand Prix of Bern.
Though the Grand Prix may represent a personal
challenge for many participating runners, it is at the same time an
environmental challenge for the organisers of the event who seek to keep the
negative impact on the environment in both the event’s administrative and
marketing processes and during the main event to a minimum. In fact, as part of
a study on different major events in Switzerland which was conducted by the WWF
in 2009 and which focused on the organisers’ efforts to be
environmentally-friendly, the Grand Prix in Bern was considered to have a great
potential to become an ecological champion like its counterpart the Lucerne
Marathon. This is mainly down to its ambitious efforts in the areas of waste
generation and recycling, catering, traffic, energy demand/consumption and
overall management.
Did you know that in 2009 about 25,000 fair-trade
bananas were given to the participants of the Grand Prix in Bern?
Same this year. At the meeting point at the finishing line of the course there
where numerous shopping carts full of bananas waiting for the runners. At the
end of the day, all that was left were loads banana peels which piled up in
bins, on tables and on the ground and which later made their way to a biogas
plant in order to be converted to energy. 
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