Author: sluck-leonard

Now that February has begun and cemented the continuation of winter, the Winter Olympics have also begun. Being an event on the world stage with competitors and viewers from every country of the world, the Olympics are a great place to involve new sustainable practices to help set a global standard. Many of the competitions presented in the Olympics are consistently practiced around the world and the sustainable practices for these sports in Olympics can help the way those sports are practiced around the world. In addition, the Olympics are practiced every 2 years, causing a lot of travel and carbon emissions every 2 years in order to present the athletes for their events. Setting a sustainable standard can make the frequent Olympics become a much more sustainable event.

First and foremost, the Olympics themselves have put out a lot of information on how they are being sustainable. The Olympics set forth their own precedent before the Winter Games in Beijing were ever commenced. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) set the goal that every single one of the subsequent Olympic games should all be at the very least carbon neutral. Beijing 2022, according to the IOC, has been and will be carbon neutral. In order to accomplish this, the IOC has made a few executive decisions and changes. First, the summer Olympic games were hosted in Beijing in 2008, meaning that there are still resources and venues that were constructed for the 2008 games that can are being reused for the 2022 games.

Besides reusing the venues that already were standing, both the existing venues and all new venues are being powered entirely by renewable energy. This is the first time that the Olympics have used renewable energy to power their venues. The two main sources of energy for the games are created through solar and wind cultivation. The solar and wind energy is being cultivated at another city outside of Beijing and then transferred to the city through the “Zhangbei flexible direct current grid project.” Outside of providing power to the venues, this energy is used to power 10% of all of Beijing’s electricity.

One aspect about the winter games is that venues and events usually need to be kept cold or at a certain level for snow or ice. This task is usually not easy to accomplish and to achieve the desired temperature usually causes a significant amount of carbon emissions. Beijing is using natural CO2 refrigeration systems in order to maintain the temperature of the venues, cutting down carbon emissions to nearly zero.

 

While Beijing and more specifically, the IOC, is doing a great job at keeping the games this year as sustainable as they can possible achieve currently, there is a larger threat at play. It is estimated that with current carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions that by the end of the century there will not potentially be a Winter Olympic Games anymore. 21 cities have hosted the Olympic games in the past, but by the end of the century, only 1 of those 21 cities is estimated to still be able to host the event. Keeping the games sustainable is important to continue having the event, but more change still needs to come. Unless the world collectively can begin to reduce the emissions being made, the world might lose one of the greatest unifying events of the modern age.

 

Works Cited

Chan, Candice Choi and Kelvin. “Explainer: Olympics Show Complexity of Sustainability Claims.” Phys.org, Phys.org, 11 Feb. 2022, https://phys.org/news/2022-02-olympics-complexity-sustainability.html.

Ioc. “Beijing 2022 Sustainability – All You Need to Know – Olympic News.” International Olympic Committee, IOC, 31 Jan. 2022, https://olympics.com/ioc/news/beijing-2022-sustainability-all-you-need-to-know.

Person, and Steve Keating. “Climate Change Will Limit Choice for Winter Games Hosts, Says Study.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 19 Jan. 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/climate-change-will-limit-choice-winter-games-hosts-says-study-2022-01-18/.

There isn’t much time left to be said for the year of 2021, so looking forward to 2022, the year will need to be started off on the right foot and that means starting sustainably. In order to do that, the common practices of celebrating the New Year will need to be revisited to see if what we do for New Year’s is up to standard or not.

First we can start with the most common New Year’s practice, setting off fireworks to bring the New Year in with a bang! The act of creating an explosion in the air that releases metal and gasses isn’t necessarily sustainable, especially when those gasses released are common greenhouse gasses such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen which are high contributors to climate change. Even when they are launched from the ground, they impact the environment by releasing sulfur as part of their propellent system. When fireworks explode, they release fine particulate matter into the air around the explosion.  Particle pollutants like the fine particulate matter are a major health risk as well as they’re easily able to get into your lungs and bloodstream, causing damage to those systems. Around celebratory events, the amount of fine particulate matter in the air can be registered up to 2 to 10 times greater than background levels. Even basic sparklers are not great for the planet as they still emit gasses into the air that will cause a higher increase in damage to the atmosphere. Because of all of the risks and damage that comes along with the use of fireworks, they have banned in multiple states and other areas in order to reduce the negative impacts they cause.

So instead of using the regular fireworks to celebrate this New Years, maybe more people can start to implement the use of more eco-friendly fireworks. There are groups who have developed more environmentally friendly fireworks, sparklers and other celebratory pyrotechnics. Some of these fireworks use smokeless charges and some have worked on using sulfur-free propellants. Researchers tracked the use of these eco-friendly fireworks to see exactly how much of a difference they make by seeing the amount of particles left in the air afterwards as well as overall quality of the air in the area they were launched compared to the areas where regular fireworks were launched. The researchers used their research to determine that the use of environmentally friendly fireworks results in a much smaller, shorter-lasting plume from the explosion point. Statistically, they are also better for particle emission resulting in only 15-65% of the fine particulate matter emissions compared to using traditional fireworks. This is a major improvement over regular fireworks, but these emissions are still far over the amount of fine particulate matter that is recommended by the World Health Organization guidelines. It is significantly over the amount due to the large use of fireworks on these holidays.

 

So in conclusion, fireworks in general are never truly good for the environment, but if you are going to set off fireworks this holiday, try to do so with eco-friendly fireworks and set off only a few to reduce the amount of damage you personally do to the environment.

 

Works Cited

“Are Fireworks Bad for the Environment? the Environmental Impact of Fireworks.” Brightly, 6 Dec. 2021, https://brightly.eco/fireworks-environmental-impact/.

EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics.

“How ‘Green’ Are Environmentally Friendly Fireworks?” ScienceDaily, ScienceDaily, 3 Mar. 2021, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210303081403.htm.