500 Boxes Of Food Allegedly Wasted & Thrown Away At Standard Chartered Marathon 2019

A marathon is something I’ve never quite understood. We’re basically just forking out money to run.

Perhaps it’s the cool race packs or the allure of being able to wear that finisher shirt at the end of the day. It’s like carrying an achievement on your back, or a combination of all of these.

One thing’s for sure though, the massive crowds that marathons draw are not always easy to manage, and sometimes, massive amounts of food get wasted too.

500 Boxes Of Food Allegedly Wasted & Thrown Away At Standard Chartered Marathon 2019

According to The Straits Times, the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon (SCSM) 2019, which was held from 29 November to 1 December has received quite a large amount of flak.

This was due to multiple road closures in the downtown city area that allegedly had motorists stuck on the roads for more than two hours.

Even couples who were having wedding banquets in town had issues and some guests and vendors could not attend the function in time.

Ironman Asia, the organiser of the marathon agreed that they “could have done better”.

However, they said that overall response from stakeholders who went for the race has been positive.

500 Bento Boxes Wasted

That’s not all though. Perhaps a more worrying issue would be the food wastage at Standard Chartered Marathon.

A Facebook user by the name of Alexis Lee took to Facebook page Green Rant to express her unhappiness.

Here is the post, in case you aren’t able to see it using the link.

She said that around 500 Bentos had been wasted because of “poor coordination from planners and logistical shortcomings”.

In the picture Alexis took, you can see that the boxes seem untouched.

In the post, Alexis also mentioned that they had tried to “rescue the food” by asking for help on a Telegram Channel. Unfortunately, it did not work out due to food safety concerns.

Wasted Bento Boxes Were Allegedly For Volunteers Who Didn’t Show Up

Hold up a minute, there seems to be an explanation as to why a whole bunch of bento boxes were left to lie around on the ground.

Apparently, the bento boxes were for volunteers who had signed up. These were supposed to be their meals. Unfortunately, some volunteers did not show up on the race day.

As a result, a lot of bento boxes were leftover and because of safety concerns, they were subsequently thrown away.

One thing’s for sure: Standard Chartered did not dispute the number of bento boxes that were thrown away.