Goldwashing at the ‘green’ Olympics

The Paris summer Olympics is done and athletes, their supporters and spectators are returning to their far corners of the world.
Nearly 11,000 athletes from more than 200 countries, 400,000 accredited officials and coaches, and several million spectators … most of them flying home.
Paris was billed as the greenest games yet, with cardboard beds, locally produced vegan food, stadium seats made of recycled plastic and ebikes to get around on.
Not all of this was appreciated by athletes, with some teams demanding more meat and eggs, and others bringing their own air conditioning units.
But the aims were good – to halve the carbon footprint of these games compared to Rio in 2016 and London in 2012. A big deal was made of using renewable energy, and only having to build two new venues (an aquatic centre and climbing venue) and two new facilities (a media village for journalists and athlete accommodation) for the event.
However the elephant in the room is air miles, with the biggest portion of greenhouse gas emissions from major sports events like this estimated to be travel. Some research suggests it accounts for between 50 and 70 percent of emissions, other work estimates it’s up to 85 percent.
“A lot of sport, and a lot of sustainability endeavours in general, are accused of different hues of greenwashing in a sense of making big promises but perhaps not taking those actions,” says Dr Chris McMillan, a professional teaching fellow in sociology at the University of Auckland.
“The Olympics and the Olympic movement is kind of at the forefront of a lot of sustainability measures in sport. But the accusation is that while they’re communicating this and making big promises perhaps they’re not following through as much as they can.
“We’re still waiting for the final carbon accounting to come,” he says.
McMillan points out though that sport is famously bad at quantifying its impact, and cities in the past have made promises during their bidding wars that have quietly slid away in the heat of the extravaganza to follow.
He says there’s a suggestion the Olympics is actually becoming less sustainable over time, as more events are added, bringing more athletes, supporters and fans from around the world.
“The larger the scale there is, the more commercial they become, the more people fly in. Inevitability that kind of sporting mega-event is going to be unsustainable, no matter how many green initiatives you take.”
There’s no doubt the Los Angeles Games in four years’ time will be an enormous event, but the city is starting from a good base in promising no new venues or facilities have to be built.
One suggestion to improve the emissions situation is to pare back the number of events to the basics; or to pick three or four host cities that already have the venues in place to rotate the games through.
But there’s another complication with climate. Projections show hosting some summer games events, such as the marathon, will become problematic because it will be too hot to run them during the day. It’s believed few cities outside Western Europe will be viable for the marathon by 2085.
And the winter Olympics is being threatened as some host cities can no longer guarantee snow.
The Detail also speaks to Newstalk ZB sport presenter and reporter Andrew Alderson, who has racked up a fair few air miles going to three Olympics – Beijing, London and the 2010 Vancouver winter games – but this time he covered them from home.
He says the building of new venues is a massive issue, with huge amounts of energy and investment being put into presenting a city’s best face to the world.
He can see a time when the Games are rotated between the same cities, ones that have the infrastructure and transport to cope with the juggernaut the games is.
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