What Happens to a Medal After the Finish Line?

Every event ends the same way. The last runner crosses the line, the barriers come down, the signage comes in, and somewhere in the back of a van there's a box of medals that nobody collected.

It's one of the least discussed parts of event planning, and one of the most common. Almost every organiser we work with, and we've been supplying events since 1988, ends up with medals left over. Not because they planned badly, but because events are unpredictable. The question is what happens to those medals next.

For a long time, the honest answer across our industry was: not much. They sit in a store cupboard until someone clears it out. This post is about why that happens, what you can do to reduce it, and what we now do to make sure leftover medals from your event don't simply become waste.

Why events end up with surplus medals

Surplus isn't a planning failure,  it's built into how events work. There are four main reasons it happens:

You have to order before you know your numbers

Medals need lead time, so orders are placed weeks or months ahead of the event, when your final field size is still a moving target. Most organisers, sensibly, round up. Running out of medals is a far worse outcome on the day than having a few spare.

Not everyone who registers turns up

 Injury, illness, weather, work, childcare, entries don't convert into finishers at 100%, and the gap between the two is where a lot of surplus is created.

Not everyone who starts, finishes

Particularly at longer distances, some participants won't make the finish line, and their medals stay in the box.

Events get cancelled or postponed

Bad weather, safety issues, a venue falling through. When that happens, an entire order can be left in storage, and if the medals are dated, they can't simply be rolled into next year.

Individually, each of these is a handful of medals. Across a season, across a region, across an industry, it adds up to a meaningful quantity of metal sitting unused.

Can race medals be recycled?

Metal medals are recyclable in principle. In practice, an individual organiser with a box of 200 leftover medals has had very few realistic options, kerbside recycling isn't designed for mixed-material items with ribbons attached, and scrap value on small quantities isn't worth the trip.

Volunteer run schemes have tried to fill the gap. One UK initiative, Sports Medal Recycling, collected unwanted medals and directed the proceeds to fundraising causes — but as Women's Running reported in 2021, the scheme no longer exists.

That's the real problem. It isn't that nobody cares, it's that the responsibility has always landed on individuals or small volunteer groups, and those efforts are hard to sustain. We think it belongs with suppliers. We made the medals; we should help deal with what's left of them.

What to do with leftover race medals: our take back scheme

If you're left with a box of medals after your event, here's what we can do about it. We've partnered with a local recycling business, so that leftover metal medals don't have to become your problem — or landfill.

Here's how it works:

1. Get in touch after your event
2. Send your leftover medals back to us. 
3. The medals go to our recycling partner. 

It's a small thing, but it closes a gap that's been open in our industry for a long time, and it means the medals you ordered in good faith don't end up as waste because your event ran 40 people under its entry list.

How to make your running event more sustainable

Recycling surplus is good. Producing less surplus in the first place is better. A few practical things that genuinely help:

Leave the year off the medal. This is the single most effective change most organisers can make. An undated medal isn't obsolete the moment your event finishes, any spares carry straight over to next year. You can refresh the personalised ribbon design annually to mark the difference, which costs far less than a new medal run. It saves money and waste at the same time.

Use your own history. If you've run the event before, your previous entry to finisher ratio is the best predictor you have. We're happy to talk through order quantities with you based on what you're expecting , that's part of the job.

Match the medal to the field. For smaller events, school competitions and fun runs, lighter-touch options make sense: our wooden medals are made from responsibly sourced poplar and are biodegradable at end of life, while our seed paper medals can be planted after the event and grow into wildflowers. Neither leaves you with a box of metal to store.

Remember the medal is already recycled. Every standard metal medal we supply is cast from 95% recycled zinc as standard, and we can supply 100% recycled zinc medals on request. So even before we talk about what happens afterwards, the material has already had a previous life.

Closing the loop — where we're trying to get to

We want to be straight about this: the take-back scheme is a step, not a solution. Medals still get made, shipped and, for the vast majority, taken home and kept, which is exactly what they're for. A finisher's medal that ends up on a wall or in a drawer for thirty years isn't a waste; it's the whole point.

What we're working towards is a genuinely closed loop: minimising waste, reducing emissions from transport, cutting energy use and maximising recycling, with the aim that nothing we produce ends up in landfill. We're not there yet. But between recycled materials going in and a take-back scheme coming out, the loop is a lot closer to closed than it was.

You can read more about where we've got to, year by year, on our sustainability page.

If you've got leftover medals from a previous event sitting in a cupboard, talk to us, we'll help you get them recycled properly. And if you're planning your next event, we can help you order in a way that leaves less behind in the first place.

Explore our eco-friendly range or get in touch with the team.