World Unites for Green Olympics

By Tim Switzer, COO and CFO

As DotGreen Community Inc. has been spreading the word and building awareness around the world’s race to go GREEN, our theme remains: “People and Planet”. Well, a large number of People on this Planet have found yet another common ground to celebrate; The Olympic Games! It is an incredible time when people and nations from the around the world come together for athletic competition and sportsmanship.  And this year more than ever, the entire event is going GREEN in London!

How and why are the London Olympics “greener” than previous events?  Here are a few examples:

• Huge focus on public transportation, with a deliberate lack of parking spaces
• The Olympic Park’s former site has been cleaned up to become a wetland with 300,000 plants and 2,000 native trees along with large amounts of recycling bins with a target of “zero waste to landfill”.
• The London Velodrome, where the world’s best cyclists will convene, is a showpiece energy-efficient, naturally ventilated arena.  It used half the materials used to build the prior Olympic site, and came in comfortably under budget – “evidence that greener projects do not need to come with a higher price tag” said Shaun McCarthy, chair of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012.
• Many of the venues, bridges and structures to accommodate an expected 11 million visitors to the London games can be disassembled, downsized and relocated for reuse and re-purposed.

Annalisa Roger, DotGreen CEO, at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development

Emmanuelle Moreau, a spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee, said “a commitment to sustainable development, which gives equal weight to economic growth, the environment and social components, will continue to be a key requirement in selecting host cities in the future”. Interestingly enough, this is the exact same “triple bottom line” approach and business model featured in the DotGreen Community’s ICANN application for the .GREEN TLD.  And with The DotGreen Community having participated at the RIO+20 recently, where we learned about zero waste goals of recycling, we see the green trend continues.  Rio de Janeiro is already working on ways to cut traffic congestion and reduce emissions ahead of the 2016 Olympic Games, and its sustainability team has been in contact with London’s.

An interesting aspect to GREEN is gender balance and social equality which has experienced  an increase in the participation of women in the Olympic games.  For the first time ever, the U.S. Team is comprised of more women than men.   A revolutionary moment will occur during the opening ceremony when women athletes from Brunei, Qatar and Saudi Arabia will march into the Olympic Stadium, the first time any of these countries have ever sent a female athlete to the Games. DotGreen Community, Inc. who has submitted an application to ICANN to forward GREEN by way of the new .green TLD applauds this International progress around the Olympic Games.

What is encouraging is that the “greening of the Olympics” on a global stage has been occurring and improving over time as the IOC has had host cities of the summer games focused on environment impact of the games for years.  It was green in Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008 and now with London “upping the ante” and Rio on board for 2016, this is an extremely positive trend toward running an important global event in a sustainable manner.

People and Planet, operating a huge global event in a sustainable and “eye on the future” manner, increase in the participation of women, a focus on environment / social / economic aspects (triple bottom line) – we at DotGreen Community embrace what London and the Olympics are doing – moving the world into the future we all want.  Congratulations London, congratulations Olympic Committee, for going GREEN!