GettyNot to shit on everybody’s Olympic hype at the minute but there’s a rather bizarre reason they’ve decided to scrap giving out celebratory flowers with Olympian’s medals.
In the past, successful Olympians were always given their medal and a beautiful bouquet of flowers but now the Rio Olympic Committee have decided not to hand out flowers due to its ‘sustainability program’, reports Mashable.
Now in brief the sustainability program sounds brilliant as it is merely trying to do what’s best for the environment by pledging to limit the amount of water, energy, food and raw materials which are used and discarded throughout the course of the Olympics.
GettyHowever the organisers at the Olympics have estimated that around 23.5 million litres of fuel will be used by Olympic vehicles, almost 30,000 megawatts of electricity (twice as much electricity as the colossal Itaipu dam needs), and an estimated 19,000 tonnes of food scraps, garbage, and general waste (five times as much waste as the 6 million Rio residents produce in a year).
But the committee has insisted that they’re ‘fully embracing’ the sustainability program for Rio – because handing out flowers after winning gold is the fucking big issue here…
FlickrA spokesperson for the committee said:
In the interest of sustainability and innovation, it was decided that flowers would not be awarded to medal winners at this Olympic Games.
The flowers awarded are usually thrown away or, even if kept, would struggle to survive in the tropical Brazilian climate.
So far two Olympic pools have turned green due to algae, the venue for sailing is full of incredibly dangerous raw sewage, and the Olympic golf course has destroyed the habitats of many rare animals and insects – but thank god there’s no Olympic flowers this time. Thank god.
