An examination of the environmental effect of Winter Olympics.
“Salt Lake City 2002: from adversity to success.” “Salt Lake City 2002: a springboard for the growth of winter sport.” “Olympic Revolution means Salt lake City is highly likely to host another Olympic Games. The big question is when.” The overwhelming success of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics has set the tone for a potential Olympic return to the city in 2030 or 2034. But the bar should be set higher in the next decade.
There were various areas of success for Salt Lake, particularly from an environmental standpoint. From creating the Olympic Cleaner and Greener program, which offset 243,840 metric tons of pollutants across the continent, to recycling or composting 85% of the Games’ waste, the inherent environmental impact that major sporting events have was clearly at the forefront of the event’s planning.
Utah had the geological privilege of being a natural winter-sports destination and Salt Lake City capitalized on this advantage. Winter sporting parks and buildings were used rather than building from scratch. Only six new buildings were constructed, with sustainability at the forefront of design. Among those existing facilities were resorts in Park City. Maximizing pre-existing spaces such as these allowed for less energy consumption and waste production in building new facilities.
Most Olympics are not necessarily successful in terms of sustainability. The 2014 Sochi Olympics was one of the environmentally worst Winter Games to date. Sochi, in southwestern Russia, was at a natural disadvantage to host, so much so that it seemed impractical for the International Olympic Committee to have chosen it. In the winter, Sochi’s average low temperature is 37 degrees, and average snowfall across multiple winter months is less than an inch, according to weatherspark.com. Compared to the Salt Lake City or Park City, the warmer difference is remarkable.
Sochi’s lack of ecological availability subsequently led to a snowball effect in forcing the city to exhaust resources, building many new facilities and even artificially producing 80% of the snow, wasting mass amounts of water.
And that does not even entirely encompass the ways the Sochi Winter Games failed to protect the environment. In a Nature Sustainability study examining Olympic Games from 1992 to 2020, the Sochi Olympics earned the lowest sustainability score (while Salt Lake City earned the highest).
While some amount of waste is inevitable, statistics show that Salt Lake did an exceptional job in creating programs that not only offset the Games’ waste and emissions, but continued their positive impact following the Olympics. After the Sochi Olympics, contrastingly, not only were many facilities abandoned, but those that weren’t are sources of pollution and economic waste. As a whole, Utah, and Park City specifically, continues to commit to sustainability, making their sophomore Olympic candidacy hopeful.
As Park City gears up for a potential hosting opportunity again, it could build on the example the state set in 2002, striving to not only offset emissions but better the area post-Olympics.
