# data[].attributes.body
Search on internet about articles / graphs / video related to this issue

# data[].attributes.body
"In the two years between April 2017 and March 2019, 100 percent of the metals required to manufacture the approximately 5,000 gold, silver and bronze medals were extracted from small electronic devices contributed by people from all over Japan," a statement on the Tokyo 2020 official website reads.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tokyo a major step forward for sustainable, climate-friendly Olympics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"As a global event with a huge visibility, the Games also carry the responsibility to take effective action to address it."

# data[].attributes.body
The medals are produced from recycled metals collected from consumers around the nation, and award ceremony podiums made from household plastic waste.

# data[].attributes.body
"The Games are being powered by electricity from renewable sources. Wood biomass power will be generated from construction waste and tree clippings, while the Games will also use power generated from solar farms in Tamakawa, Naraha and Okuma in Fukushima" Source: The national times

# data[].attributes.body
Use of sustainable materials, solar energy and purchase of carbon credits

# data[].attributes.body
1. athletes sleep on recyclable cardboard beds, podiums have been made from recycled plastic and medals have been made with metals obtained from recycled phones and other electric devices.
2. At the opening ceremony, the torchbearer will wear a uniform made from discarded Coca-Cola bottles and hold a hydrogen-fueled torch formed of repurposed aluminium from disaster relief shelters.
3. However, when University of Lausanne researchers analysed all 16 Olympics that have taken place since 1992, they noticed a clear decrease in the sustainability of the games since then, with Tokyo in the bottom three.

This trend can be traced back to the increasing size of the event, Gogishvili says, which causes a chain reaction of environmental, social and economic impacts.

"In 1964, when Tokyo last hosted the Summer Olympics, there were 5,500 athletes participating," he said. "Today, there will be around 12,000."

"More athletes means more events, more participating countries and more media. They need more venues, accommodation and larger capacity, which means more construction and a more negative ecological footprint."

# data[].attributes.body
athletes sleep on recyclable cardboard beds

# data[].attributes.headline
The Tokyo Olympics are also using sustainable materials in just about every facet of the event: athletes sleep on recyclable cardboard beds, podiums have been made from recycled plastic -source https://www.sustainability-times.com/environmental-protection/tokyo-a-major-step-forward-for-sustainable-climate-friendly-olympics/ .-Tamar

# data[].attributes.subject
The Tokyo Olympics are also using sustainable materials in just about every facet of the event: athletes sleep on recyclable cardboard beds, podiums have been made from recycled plastic -source https://www.sustainability-times.com/environmental-protection/tokyo-a-major-step-forward-for-sustainable-climate-friendly-olympics/ .-Tamar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tokyo a major step forward for sustainable, climate-friendly Olympics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"As a global event with a huge visibility, the Games also carry the responsibility to take effective action to address it."

# data[].attributes.body
The Tokyo olympics have had many efforts of sustainability. They made the medals from old phones and electronics, they also used recyclable cardboard beds.

# data[].attributes.body
1. 500 fuel cell electrical vehicles as passenger cars
2. 5,000 medals made from past consumers electronics
3. Use of recycle card board bed
4. Sports uniforms with recycled materials

# data[].attributes.body
Sustainability at the Olympics? Here Are Tokyo 2020’s Plans (greenmatters.com)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Source: Getty Images

For the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (which are happening in the summer of 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic), eight new venues were built, and more than 11,000 athletes (plus numerous spectators) will fly to Japan for the games.

All that doesn't really make for a sustainable Olympics - but the Olympics committee actually does have a few initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of the massive sporting event, some of which have been in the works for years.

Article continues below advertisement

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics has a sustainability concept and themes.

Kicking off on Friday, July 23, 2021, the Tokyo 2020 Games have considered sustainability from the beginning. "From the outset, Tokyo 2020 has been dedicated to leveraging the opportunities provided by hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games to help build a more sustainable society," said Yuki Arata, the senior director of sustainability for the Olympics' organizing committee, as per E&T.

Additionally, several weeks before the Games kick off, the Olympic organizers have already purchased 150 percent of the carbon credits needed to offset the Games' greenhouse gas emissions, meaning the Olympics will actually be "carbon negative," as reported by NPR. Of course, it's better to not produce emissions in the first place than to offset them - and the Olympics could certainly save resources in the future by using existing infrastructure rather than building so much new space for events and housing.

Article continues below advertisement

The Tokyo 2020 Games also have a sustainability concept: "Be better, together - For the planet and the people."

"We will take the initiative to meet its responsibility to deliver sustainable Games and showcase solution models of global sustainability challenges to people in Japan and around the world," reads a statement on the sustainability page of the official Tokyo 2020 website.

Article continues below advertisement

The committee's primary sustainability goal is to adhere to the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which include: no poverty, affordable and clean energy, climate action, gender equality, and responsible consumption and production.

The Olympics have also set five sustainability themes for this year's Games:

Climate change: The Games plan to use renewable energy as much as possible and work towards zero carbon emissions

Resource management: The 2020 Olympics have a goal of producing zero waste.

Natural environment and biodiversity: The Games will contribute to Tokyo's idea of "city within nature/nature within the city."

Human rights, labor, and fair business practices: The Olympics committee plans to follow the UN's Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Involvement, cooperation, and communications: The committee wants the Games to be "open to everyone."

Article continues below advertisement

Additionally, the Olympics have developed a Sustainable Sourcing Code, which sets standards for various products and services used in the Games, including merchandise, timber, agricultural products, paper, livestock, fish, and palm oil.

The Olympic podiums are made from recycled plastic.

For this year's Olympic and Paralympic Games, there will be a 3D-printed podium made of recycled, donated plastic waste, designed by Asao Tokoro. "The underlying philosophy was to create something we would want to keep instead of throwing away as rubbish," Tokoro said about the podium, in an interview on the official Olympic website.

Ironically, the podium produced as part of an initiate with Procter & Gamble (P&G), the No. 7 plastic polluter of 2020.

Article continues below advertisement

The Olympic medals are made from recycled metals.

For this year's Olympic and Paralympic Games, about 5,000 medals have been made from recycled small electronic devices that people across Japan donated for the project. The Olympics state that this year's Olympics are the first to use recycled medals, and the first Olympics to get locals involved in the process.

Additionally, the trays used to hold the medals (pictured above) are made from recyclable thermoplastic polymer.

The Olympics are far from being a good thing for the environment, but it's nice to see that at least some efforts are being made.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sustainability at the Tokyo Olympics: A Look Into the Recycled Medals, Podiums, and Eco Initiatives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Tokyo Olympics have a number of sustainability initiatives.

# data[].attributes.body
they use renewable energy
athletes sleep on recyclable cardboard beds
podiums made from recycled plastic and medals made from recycled metals collected from recycled phones and other electric device.

# data[].attributes.body
Tokyo is a very sustainable country so that itself answers that the olympic game would be sustainable. They have the concept "Be better, together for the planet and the people". For example, the medals are made from recycled metals and the athletes were sleeping on recycled cardboard beds; just to name a few. Essentially, they made mostly everything from recycled materials.

# data[].attributes.body
Climate change: The Games plan to use renewable energy as much as possible and work towards zero carbon emissions

Resource management:  The 2020 Olympics have a goal of producing zero waste.

Natural environment and biodiversity: The Games will contribute to Tokyo’s idea of “city within nature/nature within the city.”

Human rights, labor, and fair business practices: The Olympics committee plans to follow the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Involvement, cooperation, and communications: The committee wants the Games to be “open to everyone

# data[].attributes.body
The bed frame is made of paper, which are able to recycle after using.

# data[].attributes.body
- Wood used to build buildings for Olympians linked to deforestation
- Claims to be "carbon negative" because of carbon credits collected, however these carbon credits do not extract carbon from the atmosphere, but only reduce future emissions
- Third-least sustainable Olympics in the past 30 years

# data[].attributes.body
"60% of competition venues will utilize existing facilities, a decision which will result in an estimated reduction of 80,000 tons of carbon emissions" Source: Olympics.com

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/FuY3x0nKnJM

2021 Olympic is not sustainable.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The hidden sight of Tokyo's homeless - BBC News

# data[].attributes.body
Despite the initiatives Tokyo made, Tokyo 2020 is still the third-least sustainable Olympics to take place in the past 30 years, according to the report. They focus on recycling without banning plastic.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00696-5

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Conceptual model

Our analysis provides an evaluation of sustainability, which is a judgement on the degree of (un)sustainability, based on ex post data on the outcomes of the Olympic Games. We took our definition of sustainable mega-events (see the preceding) as the starting point for developing the conceptual model in Fig. 1 to evaluate the sustainability of the Olympic Games. The model started from current debates on global sustainability that posit the need to respect planetary biophysical boundaries while guaranteeing a minimum threshold of social well-being. It therefore measures resource consumption, such as ecological and material footprints; social protection and well-being, such as social equity and social peace; and economic efficiency, such as cost overruns and long-term use of event facilities.

The model features three indicators for each of the three dimensions of sustainability (ecological, social and economic). The use of three indicators per dimension increases reliability, reducing the effect of uncertainty and measurement errors. All indicators reflect ex post data, except for Tokyo 2020, where we used the most recent estimates available by October 2020. Using ex post data corrects for the overwhelming dominance and political preference for ex ante predictions that may help to justify holding the Olympic Games vis-à-vis stakeholders but whose predictions are often wrong. The model contains both qualitative (text-based) indicators (rule of law, long-term viability) and quantitative indicators (all others), to allow a comprehensive assessment.

The total of nine indicators were required to fulfil two basic criteria: they needed to be valid for evaluating the sustainability of the Olympic Games and data needed to be available. We undertook two steps to ensure the validity of the model. In a first step, we ascertained content validity by determining whether each of the nine indicators represented a major aspect both of the concept of sustainability as such and of the impacts of mega-events on sustainability. We did this through reviewing the existing literature, and results are shown in Supplementary Table 1 in the columns 'justification' and 'relation to the literature'. We go beyond existing approaches to event sustainability by focusing not just on the presence of sustainability policies and programmes but on outcomes and by focusing not so much on the management practices of the event itself as on the wider impacts in the city and region.

In a second step, we ascertained attribution validity, determining whether the outcomes in the values of each indicator could plausibly be attributed to the Olympic Games. This problem of attribution is an important one when attempting to evaluate any policy or intervention, not just the Olympic Games. In choosing our indicators, we opted for a plausibility approach, meaning that we aimed to minimize the influence of confounding factors on the measured indicators to isolate, to the greatest degree possible, the impact of the Olympic Games (see column 'plausibility of attribution' in Supplementary Table 1). For this reason, we did not include indicators such as change in GDP, tourist arrivals, external image perception, air quality or others, as a plausible attribution of a change in these to the Olympic Games is difficult to establish.

It is important to note that there can never be absolute certainty that the observed change in the indicators is due to the Olympic Games. This limitation is shared among all evaluations of social phenomena against an external intervention, from public health interventions to policy evaluations, and should not preclude us from conducting such evaluations as long as we can demonstrate, as we do here, reasonable plausibility in the attribution of outcomes.

A comparative longitudinal assessment depends on the data availability of the least-well-documented event, which constrains the choice of indicators. While some Olympic Games are extensively documented (such as those of Vancouver and London, notably through the Olympic Games Impact Studies), others, in particular older ones, are less so. As is the case with all evaluation designs, notably with those of complex phenomena such as the Olympic Games, we needed to strike a compromise between comprehensiveness and feasibility. We should therefore stress that while we present the most comprehensive longitudinal evaluation of the sustainability of the Olympic Games to date, this is just one possible evaluation and other conceptual models are possible.

Sample delimitation

Our sample contains all Olympic Games from 1992 to 2020 (N = 16). We have chosen 1992 as a cut-off point for five reasons. First, this is when issues of environment and sustainability started to gain traction, both globally (Earth Summit 1992) and in the Olympic Games. Second, this is the beginning of the period when the Olympic Games began to grow considerably, with the explosion of revenues from sponsorship and broadcasting, and therefore started to have larger impacts on their hosts. Third, from the Barcelona 1992 Olympics onwards, host cities also explicitly started to harness the Olympic Games for urban development, trying to leverage it for urban change. Fourth, 1992 marks the point when the mega-event became a global phenomenon sensu stricto, with the integration of the former Eastern bloc into global capitalism. Fifth and last, 1992 is also a breaking point in data availability. Olympic Games before that year are less well documented, and it proved difficult to populate data points for our model.

Data collection

Data collection presented a major effort, as mega-events are known for being opaque. The absence of coherent data to evaluate any aspect of the Olympic Games, not just their sustainability, is problematic, all the more so considering the exorbitant public expenditure. Part of this opaqueness results from the absence of systematic data collection across events, except for a small number of indicators by the IOC. The IOC's Olympic Games Impact (OGI) initiative-a series of independent reports before and after the Olympic Games based on indicator sets-sought to change that, with a view to comprehensively measuring the outcomes of the Olympic Games and creating a standard for sustainability across Olympic host cities. Launched in 2000, OGI featured a series of 126 indicators in the three spheres of economic, environmental and sociocultural impacts that are monitored over a period of 12 years. The IOC required that host cities mandate an independent research partner to carry out the study according to a set of predefined instructions. The full cycle of four reports, however, was only completed for a single Olympic Games, Vancouver 2010. Host cities complained that the OGI was too cumbersome, so the IOC reduced the number of reports and eventually abandoned OGI altogether in January 2017, replacing it with a series of sustainability reports issued by the Olympic organizing committees. This has removed the only independent, systematic data source for assessing sustainability in the Olympic Games and put in its place anecdotal reports that are issued by the very organization that is under review, thus creating a conflict of interest.

Another element of the opaqueness results from carelessness, obfuscation and sometimes deliberate destruction of records. Thus, in the run-up to the Sochi Olympic Games, accounts were sometimes not kept when under time pressure. Said one investor: "we were in such a hurry in the end that we didn't count the money". In many cases, crucial information is not collected, not reported, not reported transparently or not accessible to the public or to researchers. For the Nagano 1998 Olympics, hosts even deliberately destroyed part of the financial records.

Due to this opaqueness, we were able to source only three of the nine indicators from single data sources: data for 'visitor footprint' and 'event size' could be collected from official reports of the Olympic Games, while data for 'budget balance' were sourced from a separate study. For the remaining six indicators, we used a mixture of the following sources: bid books and official reports from the Olympic Games, independent third-party assessments (such as national audit chambers), academic literature, media reports and reports by non-governmental organizations. Many of these sources were available online for more recent events and available in archives for older events. Standardized definitions for each indicator ensured commensurability of data from different sources. For each data point, we also assessed the reliability of the source, including only data points with at least medium-high reliability in the analysis.

While we collected data among the author team for eight editions of the event, we contracted experts to collect data and sources for another eight editions (Barcelona, Lillehammer, Atlanta, Nagano, Salt Lake City, Athens, Beijing and Vancouver). This was necessary because we either lacked the skills to read documents in the local language or needed to access archives in situ. All contractors were academics, and most of them had done previous work on the specific mega-event we commissioned them to work on. They were given a strict set of instructions and definitions to follow and were required to provide a scan of the original source for each data point. The project team validated all data points and cross-checked them against each source to ensure reliability.

Data scoring

We scored each indicator on a scale from 0 to 100 in increments of 20, where 0 means least sustainable and 100 means most sustainable. Rules for assigning scores are detailed in Supplementary Table 1. We chose end points of scores either according to natural limits (for example, in the indicator 'new construction' a score of 100 was assigned where there was no new construction) or, where these were not evident, by choosing the most extreme case in the sample. Increments between the extreme points were then defined in such a way as to create intervals of roughly equal size. To adjust for size differences between the Summer and the Winter Olympic Games, we applied different scales for these two sub-groups for two indicators ('visitor footprint' and 'event size') according to the same scoring rules (Supplementary Table 1).

The presence of values at both extremes of the scoring scale (Fig. 2b) indicates that our scoring rules are fair in the sense of not being too strict (thus making it unlikely to obtain scores of 100) or too lenient (making it easy to obtain high values).

Whereas scoring of numeric indicators was straightforward, for the two qualitative indicators, three scorers assigned scores independently from each other to increase reliability. They then discussed and resolved any differences in their scores. Out of 144 data points, 7 (4.9%) are missing. There is no reason to assume a systematic pattern in missing values that would bias results. Missing values were therefore ignored for calculating mean scores and mean differences between groups.

For evaluating the overall sustainability of an Olympic Games, we used a score-card approach, where we calculated the mean across all nine indicators, assigning equal weight to each score. This is a measure of relative sustainability: a score of 100 does not mean, therefore, that an event is sustainable in the sense of respecting planetary boundaries while guaranteeing social well-being. The choice of adding scores instead of multiplying them assumes that a compensation is possible between the different dimensions of sustainability, that is, that a deficiency in one score can be compensated by a surplus in another.

Data analysis

The sample of 16 editions makes this a set of indicators on the Olympic Games that can be analysed with inferential statistics. The sample size allows performing statistical tests with sufficient statistical power ( π  > 0.8) for large effect sizes (>0.8) at a probability level of 0.05. It does not, however, provide sufficient statistical power to detect medium or small effect sizes.

We checked bivariate correlations among the nine indicators (reported in Supplementary Table 2) to rule out strong correlations ( r  > 0.8), which could question the unique conceptual contribution of specific indicators. No strong correlations were found, and only 3 of the 36 correlations are significant.

We used descriptive statistics (frequencies, mean values and standard deviations) to characterize the dataset and inferential statistics (two-tailed independent samples t test of mean value differences) to identify significant differences between groups. Mean scores were rounded to the next nearest integer for presentation in the manuscript. We used correlation models with Pearson's r as a standardized correlation coefficient for estimating the linear trends of sustainability in Fig. 3 at a significance level of 0.05 (two-tailed).

We also constructed an exploratory regression model to examine whether we could predict sustainability scores with host context indicators, such as the level of income in a country, the degree of corruption or the size of the host city. We did not find any significant effects (which might simply be due to a lack of statistical power, see the preceding) and therefore do not report results here.

Limitations

There is no accepted definition of the sustainability of large events. Despite justification of our choice of indicators, our model is just one model of sustainability. It is a systematic and evidence-based model, but, like all models of sustainability, it still reflects a subjective judgement about what to include in defining sustainability. Other models are possible and might result in different outcomes. The same caveat applies to the scoring, where other cut-offs and intervals are possible (which would, however, not affect the relative ranking of hosts, as the underlying data remain the same).

We also did not include potential catalyst effects of the Olympic Games on sustainability due to the absence of reliable and comparable data and to difficulties of plausible attribution. Effects typically claimed include long-term image and growth benefits, inspiring people to take up sport, lead a healthier lifestyle or become more conscious of the environment, or creating peace and intercultural understanding. In general, however, evidence is thin for claims that seek to attribute to sports the role of a larger force for bringing about social, economic and ecological benefits.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
An evaluation of the sustainability of the Olympic Games

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sustainability has been added as a 'pillar' of the Olympic movement, but this analysis examines each Summer and Winter Games since 1992 to find that the performance of host cities across a range of indicators has been declining over time.

# data[].attributes.body
1. The card board beds are made from tropical plywood in Indonesia, such conversion destroys some oldest forests which are home to endangered orangutans.
2. Gained more than enough carbon credits which caused carbon negatives