It’ll take more than trees to offset Rio's Olympic footprint

Both the 2012 London Games and the newly announced 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics are looking to offset the thousands of athletes, coaches and sports fans converging on their cities.

But Rio’s “Carbon Zero 2016” campaign is planning to offset the entire games through tree planting. Three million saplings, when all said and done, actually.

Tree planting is a great start. The trees will throw tons and tons of oxygen into the air, helping to combat carbon emissions from things like plane rides and construction projects.

But I’ve yet to read about Rio officials looking at ways to decrease the amount of carbon they plan to use. Any green program should have both offsets and reductions, especially programs as high-profile as the Olympic games.

Brazil’s Environment Minister Carlos Minc told the French Press Agency they plan to have an “all-green” competition. But what exactly does that mean?

Minc is talking in terms of offsets, of course. But taken literally, a completely green Olympics would mean zero plane rides and zero new construction.

Now wouldn’t that prove true to the spirit of the international games? Bikers could bike to Rio, swimmers could swim and track stars would have plenty of hurdles on the way. Obviously, ping-pong players and the like would still need some help.

This is a silly idea, of course. But the underlying point is this: The word green is always up for interpretation. If those planning the games of the futures want to make green programs more than just a public relations ploy, they should come up with a multifaceted way to truly cut back on the impact of the event.

It’s not as though the host city or country are in this alone. The Olympics are perhaps one of the best venues for green companies to show off sustainable solutions. Let’s see some more coordination and inventiveness, not simply rows and rows of new trees.