By Taylor Jamison, Staff Writer

The Olympics are known for bringing the world together, as a time to set aside politics and cultural differences for the sake of celebrating the talent each country has to offer. Despite the good cause, however, comes serious environmental concerns that aren’t often considered.

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The Summer Olympics in Rio had 28,500 athletes and staff travel to Brazil, according to Huffington Post, with that number not taking into account any families or fans who may have come as well. Each of these people traveled by plane, meaning there was a massive carbon dioxide output in order to get them where they needed to go. Huffington Post also states that during the duration of the Rio games 3,600,000 tons of CO2 were emitted into the environment, a well as 17,000 metric tons of waste produced, 23,500 liters of fuel and 29,500 gigawatts of electricity used.

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The Chinese Government proposed to reduce pollution levels in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, which was successful briefly, only due temporary factory closures and restrictions on automobiles, according to Huffington Post. Today, the air quality is worse than it’s ever been. The same story describes the degradation of wetlands in Athens from the 2004 Olympics, and the increase of erosion from winter Olympics and the building of ski slopes. The 2004 Athens games, specifically, received very low scores from a report from the World Wildlife Fund that evaluated how ‘green’ the games would be. On a scale of 0-4, the Athens Olympics received a 0.77 for categories such as environmental planning, protective of natural areas, waste management and the use of environmentally-friendly construction.

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Demetres Karavellas, Chief Executive Officer of WWF-Greece explained this score, saying, "Unfortunately, the environment never figured as a priority in the planning of the Athens Olympic Games. While the IOC (International Olympic Committee) calls the environment its third pillar of Olympism, it has done very little to keep this from crumbling under the weight of other priorities.”

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The Olympics have also, however, brought some attention to the global environmental crisis, particularly in the 2016 Rio Olympics. USA Today describes the moment in the opening ceremonies where the tone switched to environmentalism, particularly the global warming crisis. Rio’s opening ceremony had each athlete carry in a native Brazilian tree seed, one of 207 difference species representing each country attending the games. Each seed was to be planted in the ‘Athletes’ Forest’ in Radical Park in Deodoro.

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The Mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, commented on the importance of the effort, saying, “The Rio Games conveyed to the world a message about the challenges we face with global warming and the need to preserve nature. Therefore, planting these seedlings is very symbolic and important, because it draws even more attention to the issue.”

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Actions such as this, as well as the installation of solar panels at the 2000 Sydney games, the increase of cycling and train-travel at the 2012 London games and the promises from the Pyeongchang Organizing Committee for a more sustainable Olympics show that strides are being taken by the Olympics and their spectators in order to make the event a more environmentally friendly one.