LA can make the Olympics cleaner and greener than the World Cup

With the fanfare from this summer’s World Cup long subsided, and that monthlong test of logistics and coordination behind it, Los Angeles is getting ready to host the Olympics in less than two years. 

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

The World Cup was a trial run in hosting a major modern international sports event at scale. Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium hosted eight games drawing more than 560,000 people, to say nothing about the watch parties and fan zones. The city proved it can put on a show.

But L.A. also proved it has a long way to go to match that enthusiasm with a plan that leaves the community better off once the Olympic crowds depart.

Experts warned the World Cup would be the most polluting yet, in part driven by carbon emissions from flying more teams to more games across three continents. And, although L.A. touts itself as a sustainability leader, the city didn’t exactly walk the talk during the 39 days of matches. 

It wasn’t unexpected: In April, the World Sports Network ranked each World Cup host city’s efforts to prioritize sustainability. Los Angeles tied for dead last with Houston and New York, and with San Francisco as the “dirtiest” host city. 

Experts predicted SoFi Stadium in Inglewood would generate nearly 125,000 lbs of trash per game.

This waste is not inevitable for the Olympics. Los Angeles can take straightforward steps to cut stadium refuse beforehand.

One significant step could be limiting single-use plastic dishware, including cups, bottles and utensils that remain the norm at big venues, despite reusable, less wasteful alternatives.

Changing that would be more than just a drop in the bucket. Venues use more than 3 billion single-use items every year. 

But how can sports arenas become waste preventers, rather than generators? One simple change: Let fans bring their own reusable bottles. 

FIFA banned reusable bottles days before the World Cup kickoff, then allowed fans one factory-sealed plastic bottle instead — a change that likely generated millions of unnecessary single-use plastic bottles. L.A. Olympics organizers must not repeat that mistake.

Even more impactfully, the LA28 Organizing Committee could prohibit single-use cups altogether. 

The average stadium annually uses about 5.4 million single-use cups, creating 64 tons of plastic rubbish. The simple alternative: cups that can be washed and reused hundreds of times, cutting that waste by about 98%, to less than 2 tons.

Venues in Los Angeles have already begun making the switch: Crypto.com Arena and Peacock Theater, both slated to host Olympic competitions, have replaced single-use cups, and the L.A. Memorial Coliseum has deployed reusable cups for several football seasons.

With reusable cups already cutting litter at major venues in L.A. and beyond, what’s missing isn’t proof they work. It’s a requirement that Olympic venues use them.

Reusable systems require upfront investment, but so does the plastic waste stream they would replace. Plastic trash cleanup alone costs as much as $13.3 billion nationwide every year, not including landfill management and ecosystem damage.

Weighed against those costs, the green investment is worth making and will benefit Los Angeles for years to come. That investment needs to happen soon. Venue and vendor contract negotiations are imminent.

The World Cup showed what happens without adequate pollution-prevention planning: Tons of waste that could have been prevented is generated, leaving millions of pieces of trash to litter communities and burden landfills. 

Requiring Olympic stakeholders to invest in reusable dishware would meaningfully reduce future pollution and give future mega-event organizers a sustainable model to follow.

Los Angeles proved it can put on a show. It has two years to prove it can also clean up after itself.