Your medal. Your legacy.
MEDALVAULT is the digital home for race medals – giving runners the glory of the medal without the challenge of what to do with it after the race, and giving race organisers a more cost-effective and planet-friendly approach to medals.
“You're taking the fun out of running.”
“You're taking the fun out of running.”
“I love my medals.”
“After putting in the work, I want my bling.”
I get it. I really do.
For many runners, the medal is the whole point. It's proof. You were there, you did the thing. And some race medals are genuinely beautiful – creative, distinctive, worth showing off.
But here's what actually happens to most of them.
They get proudly photographed after the finish line. They hang somewhere for a while. And then, quietly, they migrate from the back of the door to a box or a bag – and that bag or box gets put in a drawer or the back of the cupboard, where they sit unloved, unappreciated and wasted. Eventually, even if we don't like to admit it, most of them end up in landfill.
I know, because that's exactly what happens to mine.
The environmental cost adds up.
Each metal medal produces around 0.8kg of CO₂ in its production lifecycle. That sounds small until you scale it up. Major marathons give out 50,000+ medals. The London Marathon alone, with 100,000 expected finishers in 2027, represents around 80 tonnes of CO₂ – roughly the same as driving a standard car 250,000 miles, or ten times around the world.
And most of those medals, amazing as they are, will still end up in a box in a drawer.
Having spent the last part of my career working to advance the circular economy – including an Executive Leadership role at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation – this bothered me in the way that only things you truly understand can bother you. Not just the waste, but the pointlessness of it. Resources extracted, emissions generated, creativity poured in – for something that ends up in the back of your wardrobe and then likely heads to landfill.
Born on a run in the farmlands of Ryde.
I took up running in my late thirties when we moved to the Isle of Wight – to escape my three young kids and spend time chatting with friends. My finish times are a testament to my commitment to slow, chatty runs. Over the years I've run everything from 5kms to a backyard ultra, accumulating a mountain of medals and a growing frustration with what to do with them.
I know some people proudly display them on rails or in folders – which is fine – but add to my medals three kids' worth of medals from sports days and dance recitals, and our collection grew faster than space in the house to display them. So, we now have bags and boxes of medals in a neglected drawer that will invariably find their way to the bin.
During Covid, with hours of running being about the only thing we could legally do, I bored my running mates senseless with a question: could we have the same experience of receiving a beautifully designed medal – without the physical object?
We've already done it with music. With books. Why not medals?
So I built MEDALVAULT.
Every runner gets their own personal vault – a digital display cabinet for their race medals. Medals are available to add to your vault the moment a race organiser uploads results. No chasing, no claiming, no faff.
Each medal comes with your full race stats: your time, your position, the date, the race. You can share your vault with a unique URL. You can download your medal as a high quality image – good enough for you, or friends and family, to print on anything. The annual tea towel for your mum, showing every race she's done that year. A hoodie with your medals on the back, like merch from a music festival. Your achievements on a digital photo frame, ready for every visitor to admire whether they like it or not.
The experience of earning a medal – without the landfill at the end.
Digital medals are better for organisers too.
Through MEDALVAULT, race organisers can distribute digital medals to every finisher automatically – at a fraction of the cost of physical medals (based on an average cost of a metal medal at £4 per medal). All you need is your medal artwork and results as a CSV file. Runners can add their medals and race statistics to their vaults as soon as race results are uploaded.
And physical medals don't have to disappear entirely. Organisers can still offer physical medals separately and give runners the option to request a physical medal at race sign-up – meaning you only order exactly what's needed. No overproduction. No medals sitting in boxes after the event. No waste.
It's a better model for everyone: runners get their medal as soon as results are uploaded, organisers cut costs and reduce waste, and the planet gets a small but meaningful break.
Hi, I'm Reniera.
Stubbington 10k – Ryde Harriers
I've spent the last seven years working at the intersection of sustainability and business, most recently as an Executive Leader at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation – the world's leading circular economy organisation. I now work as an independent expert in the circular economy space.
I live on the Isle of Wight with my husband, three daughters, an enthusiastic border collie and two cats. I'm on the committee of Ryde Harriers – one of the oldest running clubs in the UK.
MEDALVAULT brings my love of running together with my knowledge and expertise in building circular business models – to support an economic model that is better for the planet.