Locog, the organizing committee for the Olympics, originally claimed that the 2012 event would be the “greenest games ever.” Promises were made that were contingent on the support and participation of Locog’s 55 sponsors, but not everyone was willing to comply.

One of Locog’s sustainability pledges is that 70 percent of all waste will be recycled or composted. Coca-Cola has now partnered up with Sita UK to make Locog’s vision feasible. The beverage giant has promised to recycle all clear plastic PET bottles and intends on recycling the materials into 80,000 new Coke bottles. To do this, Coca-Cola will be joining forces with Eco Plastics and will open a new recycling plant in north Lincolnshire. Coca-Cola manager Jon Woods commented on Coke’s environmental initiatives, stating that they are the company’s “most sustainable sponsorship activation” thus far.

Meanwhile, London’s Tower Bridge will be undergoing some major changes. They’ve received final approval to renovate the lighting system into a greener, LED setup. The changes will be far more energy efficient, as energy consumption is expected to be reduced by up to 40 percent.

London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, says, “The spectacular view of Tower Bridge from my office in City Hall is one of my favourites in London, and it’s fantastic to now be able to crack on with this work to make it even better, brighter and greener and at no cost to the taxpayer.” Johnson continued, saying, “This city is going to be watched by the world next summer and this grand old lady of London, one of our best loved landmarks, is now set to play a sparkling role in the celebrations. But what’s more, this is another lasting legacy stemming from the Games which will benefit the city for decades.”

The Tower Bridge renovations will be made possible through Olympic sponsors EDF Energy and GE. Hopefully, more sponsors will step up to the plate by chipping in and making the necessary changes to ensure that the 2012 Olympics will be as green and eco-friendly as possible, so that the games can run as smoothly as a brand new garage door.

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With only a few days left before the 2010 Olympic Games officially begins, there is a buzz around the streets of Vancouver. Being a resident of the city, I can certainly say it has undergone some radical changes in the past few months. Regardless of whether or not you support the games, it seems everyone has something to say.

Recent talk has surrounded the issue of sustainability. Considering, at the very least, the carbon emissions created by all the flights into the host city (and some residents’ flights out of the city) the Olympics can never be genuinely environmentally-friendly. However, Vancouver 2010 has been promoted as “the greenest Olympics ever” (official website: http://www.vancouver2010.com/sustainability/).

Interestingly, David Suzuki recently awarded Vancouver 2010 a bronze medal for sustainability (full article: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/latestnews/dsfnews02031001.asp). He writes: “achievements of the 2010 Olympics include building energy-efficient venues, using clean-energy sources, relying on public transit during the Games, and offsetting part of the Games’ emissions.” However, several areas were lacking. For example, the David Suzuki Foundation admits that “opportunities to create lasting reductions in transportation emissions in the region have been missed.” In addition, the carbon-offsetting accounted for less than half of the overall emissions.

Are the 2010 Olympics green? Yes, but only because there’s no snow! Which raises the first major point. Vancouver is mild, sunny, and snow-free, which has Olympic officials incredibly worried. What has everyone most concerned is the lack of snow at Cypress mountain, where major events will be held. The solution? Instead of switching locations to snow-filled Whistler, trucks have been transporting snow three hours—from Manning Park all the way to Cypress, using fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases. Around the city, road closures and detours have also created traffic havoc, thereby increasing greenhouse gases.

An equally controversial topic is the famous red Olympic $10 mittens. They are marketed as the must-have souvenir for the games and it seems every second Vancouver resident on the street is wearing them. Ironically, the mittens are made in China. This has been argued by some as trivial and irrelevant, but as such a prominent icon of the (“green”) Olympics, the symbolic importance of this hypocrisy should not be ignored. Profit is certainly more important than sustainability, as countless other souvenirs (made around the world and shipped to Vancouver) are also ready on the shelves to be consumed.

Finally, as if Christmas lights don’t create enough controversy, many Vancouver residents have been encouraged by VANOC to “Paint the Town Red” by decorating their houses with red and white lights, using more electricity.

As climate change continues to become a more and more pressing issue, it’s crucial that long-term, legitimate measures be taken on the part of organizations like the Olympic Committees. Greenwashing won’t cut it. After all, the Winter Olympics just wouldn’t be the same without, well, winter.

Photo credit: cmaccubbin

Tomorrow President Barack Obama will visit Denmark to try to raise support for Chicago’s Olympic bid for the 2016 summer games. First lady Michelle Obama arrived in Denmark earlier and will, with the support of Oprah Winfrey, also try to help out with the lobbying.

“President Barack Obama, who initially planned to let First Lady Michelle Obama represent the United States in Copenhagen this week, when the International Olympic Committee chooses a site for the 2016 summer games, plans to travel there too.”

Besides Obama, the Brazilian President Lula di Silva and Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama will also visit Copenhagen tomorrow and pitch their home countries as the perfect host for the Olympic summer games in 2016. The event will take place at the International Olympic Committee summit tomorrow which just happens to be the same venue where the UN climate change summit will be held in December.

Obama is not visiting Copenhagen to show support for a fair, strong and binding climate target. Instead he is trying to lobby for an Olympic game summer event in Chicago. And no, so far Obama has not promised to go to the Cop15 climate change conference in December. This would be a perfect opportunity for Barack Obama, Lula di Silva and Hatoyama to show support for a climate deal that Gordon Brown says is in “grave danger” of failing. One can just wonder what kind of priorities our leaders has…

But Joe Romm from Climate Progress says “this is the best news I’ve heard in a while”. Romm says he is now confident Obama will participate in the climate negotiations later in December:

“This is the best news I’ve heard in a while. After all, if the president is going to Copenhagen for something that is relatively inconsequential both substantively and politically — it’s not like Illinois is in great jeopardy for the Dems — then I can now predict with high confidence he will be go to Copenhagen in December for the climate talks, which will be crucial for helping achieve a global deal.

Let’s hope he is right.

Billions of us have seen the performances of the marvellous athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The top 15 countries in terms of 5 or more Gold medals were the host nation China (#1, 51 Gold medals), the US (#2, 36), Russia (#3, 23), the UK (#4; 19; the next Olympic host nation), Germany (#5, 16), Australia (#6, 14), South Korea (#7, 13), Japan (#8, 9), Italy (#9, 8), France (#10, 7), Ukraine (#11, 7), the Netherlands (#12, 7), Jamaica (#13, 6), Spain (#14, 5) and Kenya (#15, 5).

However we must ask the question: how GREEN were the efforts of the successful Gold Medal-winning countries?

Clearly winning Gold is not vital for human survival – it can be seen in today’s starving world as a national pride indulgence and involved significant national investment (apparently up to $100 million dollars for each Gold Medal won by Australia). Winning Gold was clearly expensive in terms of dollars and hence in terms of greenhouse gas pollution in a global carbon-based energy system. However it is a major research project to determine the precise investment in Gold Medals for every country.

One initial approach to “How Green were the Gold Medal Winners?” is to determine the Olympic Gold Medal Tally per capita. In terms of “Gold Medals won per million of population” Jamaica (2.222) was #1 followed by Bahrain (#2, 1.326), Estonia (#3, 0.775), New Zealand (#4, 0.763), Mongolia (#5, 0.749) and Australia (#7, 0.697). India (0.00091) came last (for a very detailed and documented analyses see “Beijing Olympic Gold Talley per head of population”).

India’s last position should be a matter of some pride to Indians because it is indicative of a humanity that says that huge investment in sport for Gold medals is an unconscionable indulgence in a world in which 16 million people die avoidably each year from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease (see “Global avoidable mortality”). This interpretation of the Beijing Olympics Gold Medal Tally is provided in an article “India TOPS humanity-indicative Olympics Population/Gold Medals list of Gold medal-winning nations”.

However, a further key part of our “Green-ness” analysis should take per capita greenhouse gas pollution into account. A better relative measure of how “greenhouse gas dirty” each national Olympic Gold Medal tally is would be to multiply the “Gold medals per million of population” by the “annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution” to get a an Olympic Gold Medal Extravagance Index (Profligacy Index or Excess Index).

Thus, for example, in terms of (A) “2008 Gold Medals per million of 2005 population” [Gold], New Zealand (0.763) just beat Australia (0.697) but according to the US Energy Information Administration, the (B) “2005 per capita fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution in tonnes per person per year” [CO2] was 9.37 for New Zealand and 20.24 for Australia. Multiplying A by B yields a Gold MedalxCO2 Pollution (gold medals.tonnes CO2) [GoldxCO2] score of 7.149 for New Zealand and 14.107 for Australia.

For a detailed breakdown of Beijing Olympics involvement by country see: http://au.sports.yahoo.com/olympics/countries/#K ; for 2005 population data see G.M. Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1905” and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com ; for the latest on the Beijing Olympics medal tally see Yahoo ; and for “2005 annual per capita fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution in tonnes per person per year”.

The superb 2008 Beijing Olympics finished with China leading the World in the Olympic Gold Medal tally (51 Gold) but coming second in Total Medals (100) to the US (36 Gold medals, 110 Total Medals). However, in terms of “Gold Medals per Million of Population” China (0.039) was BELOW the World average (0.046) whereas the US (0.120) was ABOVE the World average.

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Here are some interesting topics from the forum worth highlighting this week:

Buying Local in a Recession, How will increasing prices affect our consumption patterns?

10 signs you have gone way to green. “Eco snobbery happens. Don’t let it happen to you!”

And here is one of our most active forum topics (it has received over 15000 views): Why is climate change not in the USA primaries?

As you read this the Olympics in Beijing are in full action, as well as in our forum. The latest Olympic related forum topic created talks about NBC Beijing Olympic set being air conditioned – outdoors.

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