The Nike Melbourne Marathon Festival is committed to developing and improving practices and considerations toward a more sustainable festival.
As the largest Marathon in Australia, our goal is to inspire people to keep moving, to promote health and wellbeing and contribute to the sustainable future of our planet, to therefore ensure we will have a platform for our event for future generations to enjoy.
We must continue to consider our small role to ensure that future generations have access to clean fresh air, an abundance of open green spaces and a thriving world to run in.
Fifteen Trees
Fifteen Trees helps individuals and businesses reduce their carbon footprint through sponsoring Australian community tree planting projects.
To date, Fifteen Trees have helped community groups plant almost 250,000 trees in all states and territories of Australia.
The Nike Melbourne Marathon Festival are committed to ensure we maintain a balanced approach to continue to take steps forward in an environmentally sustainable event delivery, while ensuring we keep our duty of care to the participant’s health and safety at the forefront of any decision made.
On behalf of our participants, sponsors, and management The Nike Melbourne Marathon Festival will plant 5,000 trees in 2022.
In the interests of biodiversity, the trees will be indigenous to the area in which they are planted and will be a mixture of large trees (such as eucalyptus and wattles) and smaller shrubs (such as bottlebrushes and grevilleas).
Trees are sourced from independent native nurseries in the area in which they are planted. They are propagated from seeds collected from local trees and shrubs.
The trees will be planted across 6 Victorian sites (actual numbers at each site to be confirmed) including Port Melbourne, Nulla Vale, Mornington Peninsula, Northern Grampians, Ballarat and Kinglake.
One tree over its lifetime will capture and store 268kg of carbon as a guide.
Therefore 268 X 5,000 = 1,340,000 kg (1,340 tons) of carbon dioxide.
In the interests of a healthy and sustainable ecosystem, we need to plant all layers of vegetation – from tall canopy trees (eucalyptus and wattles) to medium sized trees (sheoaks and grevilleas), and smaller shrubs (hakeas and teatrees). The greater the variety, the greater the biodiversity. This means that the native wildlife (including mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, worms and fungi) has access to a variety of food and habitat. While carbon capture is important, so is a self-sustaining ecosystem and that can only be obtained by diverse planting.
The United Nations have developed Sustainability Goals to encourage countries, companies and individuals to rise to the challenge of climate change. By partnering with Fifteen Trees on this project, we are covering 3 of the 17 goals;
- 3. Good Health and Wellbeing
- 13. Climate Action
- 15. Life on Land
