Filed under: Celebrities, Activism, Climate Change

Whenever you bring together a big group of eating, drinking, trash-making humans, the green clique starts to get concerned about the environmental impact of the event.

In 2008, Beijing tried very hard to make the Summer Olympics as environmentally-friendly as possible. Now the Vancouver Winter Olympics are being compared to those efforts. It looks like the Canadians will both surpass and be eclipsed by the Chinese.

In terms of architectural green-ness, Vancouver is pretty impressive. The Olympic Village is being built to the LEED Gold standard and they will have a LEED Platinum Community Centre. The speedskating oval is built from pine beetle damaged wood. But as Treehugger reported, some folks are disappointed because these uber-green buildings are too utilitarian. In short, they're ugly.
The architecture in Beijing was pretty amazing, but do you remember the cool Bird's Nest? No one uses it now! No matter how many gallons of low VOC paint are used, an empty stadium is always an environmental loser.

Aesthetics aside, official Olympics beverage sponsor, Coca Cola, is shooting for a carbon neutral Olympics. They introduced bottles made from 30 percent plant-based materials, and they're using hybrids for delivery.

The athletes themselves are also some of the greenest ever. Yesterday USA Today had a profile of several Green Olympic athletes, including:

• Gretchen Bleiler, snowboarding, who works with an amazing list of non-profits, including:The Climate Project, Natural Resources Defense Council, Aspen Snowmass Save Snow campaign and StopGlobalWarming.org. She also designed a 100 percent recycled polyester snowboarding pant and jacket for Oakley.
• Hannah Kearney, freestyle skiing, is a green citizen who composts, recycles, brings her own shopping bags and drives a hybrid. Total role model!
• Angela Ruggiero, hockey, is gearing up for her fourth Olympics, and still finds time to be an active member of 350.org, the international campaign focused on inspiring the world to find solutions for the climate crisis.

Watching the green progress from two years ago gives the games an interesting added dimension for us Greeniacs at home, who worry about how many energy bar wrappers and plastic water bottles are going to wind up in the trash. This year, it sounds like that number is going to be closer to zero than every before. Now that's a reason to cheer!

Will Vancouver Be Remembered as the Green Olympics? originally appeared on Green Daily on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

 

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