Carrying the torch for green.

In a London Olympics 2012 poster titled “being greener”, the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games vows to keep this year’s Games eco-friendly.

London’s Olympic Park will be one of the biggest city parks newly constructed in Europe for more than 150 years. The Games will host 26 Olympic events, 20 Paralympic events, 14,700 athletes, 21,000 media, and 10.8 million ticket holders. While it will inevitably boost the city’s economy, the strain on resources is unavoidable. The Organizing Committee is working hard to maintain a high level of sustainability despite all that needs to be constructed, and the the “being greener” poster is a representation of London’s conscious efforts to make its Olympics the greenest of them all.

The Park will be equipped with some of the most cutting-edge technology to curtail the Games’ greenhouse gas emissions, preserve the natural habitat surrounding the area, as well as to recycle, reuse and reduce all waste. In a pamphlet distributed by the Organizing Committee, the extent of London’s green efforts are detailed.

• 20% of the energy used on the Olympic Park will come from renewable sources
• 4,000 newts and hundreds of toads have been removed from the Park to be protected
• 90% of the materials from the demolition of building in the Olympic Park have been recovered so they can be reused or recycled.
• 50% of materials that are being used to construct the Park will be transported by water or rail, saving thousands of trips on local roads.
• A 120-meter wind turbine in the Park will produce enough electricity for 1,000 homes
• 80 lampposts, 2 tons of red bricks, and 76 tons of paving stones will be saved for reuse on the Park.
• A 3-kilometer footpath and cycle-way will be improved for the local population as well as wildlife.
• Rubbish was removed from 8.35 kilometers of waterways running through the Olympic Park
• 45 hectares of wildlife habitats will be left on and around the Park after the games

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

The post How London is Keeping the 2012 Olympics Sustainable appeared first on EcoSalon.

As London pledges the greenest Olympics ever, McDonald’s plans a massive temporary restaurant that will serve visitors and athletes alike.

The term “Olympic athlete” evokes visions of lean muscles and powerful bodies: the pinnacle of human physical achievement, performing amazing feats of strength and endurance. We associate these fierce competitors with the utmost in human health, requiring untold hours of training and only the most nourishing foods. So it’s all the more jarring to hear that this year’s Olympics will see the construction of the world’s largest McDonald’s – which will run for only six weeks. And there will be another location in the Olympic Village, where the athletes will live.

From July 27th through September 9th, more than 50,000 Big Macs and 180,000 servings of fries are expected to flow out of a two-story, 32,000-square-foot McDonald’s with 1,500 seats. That’s about half the size of a football field. When the games are over, the oversized fast food restaurant will be torn down. It’s made of recyclable materials, at least – but that doesn’t do much to make up for the fact that McDonald’s represents the opposite of healthy, nourishing, performance-enhancing food.

McDonald’s has been an official sponsor of the Olympics since 1976, and has acted as the games’ official restaurant nine times. Doctors in the UK are less than thrilled about this year’s sponsorship, arguing that shilling fatty mass-produced junk food is sending the wrong message to a nation that’s dealing with ballooning obesity rates. McDonald’s expects to serve at least 300,000 patrons throughout the course of the games, and will be advertising extensively, with its logo plastered all over anything that’s Olympics-related.

The sponsorship means that McDonald’s will be the only branded food that’s sold within London’s Olympic Park, and to the athletes.

“It’s very sad that an event that celebrates the very best of athletic achievements should be sponsored by companies contributing to the obesity problem and unhealthy habits,” Terence Stephenson of the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges told MSNBC. “These brands are using the Olympics to be associated with medals and svelte, fit athletes,” he said. “They don’t want us to think of fat, unhealthy people when we think of their products.”

McDonald’s is clearly aware of the chance to gloss over its well-earned reputation as a major contributor to obesity and other health problems. The massive temporary location and two others planned for the park will give away nine million “activity toys” with Happy Meals, which will measure how many steps and jumps children take throughout each day, and will prominently display nutritional advice throughout the restaurant. Obviously there’s some irony in this, considering that a single meal of a burger, fries and a milkshake can easily exceed half of a grown man’s daily recommended calorie intake, and actual nutrition is severely lacking.

Applicants who want to snag one of the 2,000 jobs that will be available at the three McDonald’s locations for the games will have to go through a competition of their own. McDonald’s is holding Olympics-inspired, X Factor-style auditions to find potential employees with the best burger-schlepping skills.

The presence of this McDonald’s isn’t the only aspect of the Olympic Games that’s raising concerns about environmental and social impacts. Oil giant BP (British Petroleum) is among the major sponsors for 2012, leading organizations like the Commission for a Sustainable London to petition the organizers.

Olympics planners have made sustainability a major theme of this year’s games. In its bid to host the 2012 Olympics, London promised the greenest games ever, reducing or offsetting portion of the  326,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions that the events are expected to generate. It won’t be clear until at least September whether they achieve this goal, though they have made some progress already in areas like green building, public transit and waste reduction.

But no matter how green the London 2012 Olympics ultimately are, will it all be overshadowed by those towering golden arches?

Photo: pointnshoot

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Vancouver will no longer be known as the affordable shooting location for TV shows from Airwolf to The X-Files. Judging by blogs, Twitter and social media trends, people are now watching the city for its environmental leadership.

Friday marks the start of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games hosted in Vancouver, marketed as the “greenest” ever Olympics by Ann Duffy, corporate sustainability officer for the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC).

Of course, she faced a huge challenge in trying to minimize the footprint and waste generated by facilities and operations to accommodate: 7,000 athletes, 10,000 media professionals, and some one million people who will buy about 1.85 million event tickets (according to estimates by MacLeans’ sports section).

But for many environmentalists, what her organizing committee has done isn’t nearly enough to warrant a green-gold medal. And the sponsors of the “greenest ever” games, basking in her green halo’s glow, are suffering scrutiny, too.

Coca Cola aspires to win a green rep through recycling efforts in Vancouver. Panasonic has pledged to offset its carbon footprint. And Teck – a mining company based in Vancouver – donated the bronze, silver and gold for the official medals, which it thankfully “mined” out of electronics waste materials, and not sensitive habitat.

Do some, none or all of the above deserve the love of ecogeeks? Put yourself in an informed position to judge, with the links and resources below.

Basic reading:

Short descriptions of green initiatives at the Winter Olympics by Earth911.com writer Amanda Wills

“Canadians have also made it clear that celebrating winter sports shouldn’t come at the expense of a healthy planet. Thousands of people signed a petition in support of making the games climate conscious. All these voices made a difference. The 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver have raised the bar for climate action, including energy efficient venues, the use of clean energy sources, and by promoting the use of public transit. Of course, there is, still, lots of room for improvement”¦” – A report entitled 2010 Winter Olympics: What’s the score on climate change? from the David Suzuki Foundation

-¦Unchecked global warming jeopardizes the future of all winter sports. Frenzied reports have been coming in for weeks about the snow situation in Vancouver, which by all accounts is not good. Snow is being saved under tarps, according to some of those reports. More snow is being trucked in from surrounding areas. And even these efforts are expected to fall short, so the snow will likely have to be “enhanced” by sand and hay underneath…So far this year, at least six events have been canceled [due to poor snow conditions].” – A Change.Org post by environmental activist Mike Gaworecki

A Vancouver-based blogger, Leah Karpus, considers everything from made-in-China souvenir mittens to local snow conditions as part of her personal assessment on the Winter Olympics green marketing campaign

Further Resources:

The Reports & Resources area of the official Vancouver 2010 Olympics website, including Environmental Assessments and Sustainability Reports

A slideshow on Mother Nature Network profiling 12 Olympic athletes who “want to save the planet.”

A story about the forthcoming London Summer Olympics from Sustain Magazine that asks: Is “Sustainable Olympics” is an oxymoron?

A WWF-World Wildlife Fund report about the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, which they say are failing to meet proper environmental standards

An activist blog post that criticizes the Olympics for claiming to be green, but taking money from industrial developers as sponsors, and using too much non-renewable energy

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring environmental news, trends and tech highlights by Lora Kolodny.

Image: Roland

The post EcoMeme: Judging the Winter Olympics appeared first on EcoSalon.

In the not-so-distant past, cities competing to host the Olympics focused on size, infrastructure and the ability to build huge sporting arenas. Sustainability really wasn’t part of the equation.

But as illustrated with the current bidding war for the 2016 Summer Olympics, times have changed.

The four leading cities – Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro – are all trying to outsell each other as being capable of providing the greenest Olympics yet.

Chicago is promising a low-carbon “Blue-Green” event focusing on low-carbon vehicles, renewable energy, reusable storm water, recyclable and reusable products and adherence to green building standards.

Meanwhile, Tokyo is offering  a zero-waste event where fuel cell and electric vehicles are the norm and everything is  powered with green energy sources, with much of the energy obtained from solar panels from the main stadium’s roof.

Madrid, on the other hand, pledges that not only would its Olympic Village would be a showcase of sustainable building, but the city would also establish thousands of hectares of new parkland, complete with bicycle lands and hundreds of thousands of trees.

And in Rio de Janeiro, where slums and luxurious resorts stand side by side, the focus is on four basic tenets of sustainability: water conservation, renewable energy, waste management and social responsibility. Already, Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, the proposed venue for rowing and flat-water canoe/kayak competitions of the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, has had a thorough clean up. And that, Rio de Janeiro says, is only the beginning.

First Lady Michelle Obama is working to persuade the International Olympics Committee (IOC) to send the torch Stateside to Chicago in 2016. They will meet in Copenhagen October 2nd.

Which city do you predict will host the games?

Shown: Chicago 2016 proposal

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