Japan’s Plan of Sustainability for the Summer Olympics 2020

Japan's Plan of Sustainability

Sustainability for the Summer Olympics 2020Japan’s Sustainability Plan for Summer Olympics: The organizing committee of the Tokyo Olympics have been putting in a lot of efforts for the next year’s Summer Olympics to make the mega sports event eco- friendly. Already tight on budget, the organizers have had the challenge to settle and arrange everything within the budget. However, the organizing committee have taken this as the challenge by taking the environment friendly approach. The committee have therefore focused on resorting to the environment friendly approach to host the Summer and the Paralympic games. It’s not just the Japanese government but the country citizens also feel the concerning problem of Global Warming. The focus of making the Olympic games more sustainable starts with the agenda “Be better, together – For the planet and the people”

Here are some initiatives are taken by the Organizers who aim to host the games successfully by going the eco- friendly way:

1. Medals made from Recycled Metals
Medals were made out of recycling the metals that was done by the Tokyo Organizing Committee in association with Japan Environmental Sanitation Center and NTT Docomo. They announced “Tokyo 2020 Medal Project” to collect small electronic devices such as used mobile phones from all over Japan. This project makes Tokyo 2020 the first in the history of the Olympic and Paralympics Games to involve citizens and to manufacture the medals using recycled metals. Approximately 5000 medals have been produced from the small electronic devices that were contributed from people all over Japan.

This collective effort by the organizers and the citizens has helped in accomplishing this task. More than 18,000 collection boxes were placed nationwide, and 1,618 of Japan’s municipalities—about 90%— participated in the project.  This effort has been hailed by everyone as it will be the very first time that the Olympic medals made out of 100% recycled materials will be used in the Summer Olympics.

2. Resource Management- Zero Wasting
Aware of the ground reality of Global Warming, the organizers have resorted to the zero wastage management. The policy of 3Rs- Reduce, reuse and recycle will be applied. The spectators will be able to carry their water bottles at the stadiums from their homes to combat the mass molding of the plastic waste and also meet the water management. The most prominent is the catching and the use of rain water for these various jobs. The same goes for the food management as well. Initiative to recycle any food products that can be used in some other capacity if not used at the games. Public hoardings and campaigns have been regularly running to make the people aware of the Food recycling and not wasting them. 

3. Climate Change: Towards Zero Carbon
It has already been declared that the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games will have renewable source of energy that will be used during the games. Meanwhile, the government is busy installing solar panels across the country side. Low-pollution, fuel-efficient vehicles such as Fuel Cell Vehicles and Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles will be used in the country to ferry the athletes. It is expected that the carbon footprint associated with procurement of overlay items will be reduced by about 80%. The Japanese government has also been working towards more use of renewable energy with vision to tackle the climatic change. 

4. Uniforms made from Recycled Clothes
The uniforms of the Japanese athletes along with the jerseys of the volunteers. This initiative has been taken by the sports company Asics. Asics plans to collect some 30,000 used items of athletic clothing across Japan through May and use polyester fibers from them to manufacture base materials for the official kit. The move comes against the backdrop of Tokyo’s efforts to host a “sustainable” event, including by using recycled metals from discarded electronics to make Olympic and Paralympic medals. 

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