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ou would expect with a budget of 51 billion dollars that this might be one of the most sustainable Olympic games and would be greatly talked about. However, yet again this has not been the case. Also among some of the big sponsoring brands are these 8 very popular brands: Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, General Electric, McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, Visa, Panasonic and Samsung. Only one of these brands decided to put on a great performance on one of the world’s biggest stage. Dow is shining bright but without a spotlight as its grand initiative has yet to really be advertised or published.
According to the article (found below) written by The Guardian, “The US chemical giant Dow has pledged to offset the Sochi organizing committee’s entire carbon footprint which also includes all greenhouse gas emissions from operating the games’ venues. They will also be offsetting travel and lodging for all athletes, staff and volunteers as well as the carbon footprint of all spectators and media attending the games.” This carbon footprint is estimated to be approximately 520,000 tones. Offsetting such a footprint would be equivalent to removing 102,000 cars off the roads or neutralizing the annual emissions associated with 10,800 homes.
Dow is expected to be able to accomplish this feat through many various company initiatives worldwide. Some of these initiatives includes infrastructure improvements, new farming methods as well as capturing and recycling methane gas from a dump in Georgia in the US. This surprising feat is a first for all Olympics and hopefully not the last.
You would think with climate change and with degrading conditions of winter recreational fields worldwide that sustainability would play a great role in hosting and executing the winter Olympics. Yet there is very little to any signs of this being the case. Olympic games are suppose to be motivational and inspiring and great sustainable feats are made to be place in the same picture frame. Dow should be acknowledge of their feat and inspiring other large corporations to follow in their footsteps to make all the following games the best possible in all aspects.
To me it is somewhat disappointing that many big brands as well the Russian Nation failed to appropriately perform at these games and try to avoid warmer winters tomorrow and ensuring that this is not the last winter Olympics ever.
Hey Greg! Thanks for the post.
Yeah I totally agree. I am shocked that they spent 51 billion dollars on the winter olympics… it is now said to be the MOST EXPENSIVE olympics games to date, beating beijing’s olympic games by over $10 billion. Like seriously, HOW WASTEFUL is that? Not to bash their olympics, but there was nothing extravagant about it whatsoever… they were so close to not finishing on time, and there were a lot of hiccups during the games. There is no reason why a country should be spending that much on a 2 week event, and not try and cover their carbon footprint and be SOMEWHAT sustainable?! I mean in Vancouver at least we had extra sky trains put in, and better bus systems so after the olympics the Vancouver citizens can benefit and it is also great for the environment.
It’s shameful to see that society can sit around and let Russia spend billions, and no one speaks up about the issue altogether. It’s clear global warming, and all these environmental issues are coming our way, but us earth citizens choose to distract ourselves and not think about it. After all, no one wants to make an investment for the future where we know we will not live to reap the benefits…. selfish but that’s how it goes!!
Funny, we both wrote about the Winter Olympics.
The entire promise of these Games was fake. The only thing they managed to achieve was to spend billions. For the rest it was only polemics about domestic politics, giant landfills around the river, and expropriation of hundreds (among other topics…).
Kelly talked about the citizens who can benefit from what was built. Sochi was a dead city, it is even more dead now that people got their house demolished…
Shared feelings about what happened in February in Russia…