Greenly - Green Blog

The inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday in Washington DC is expected to draw more than 2 million people to view the historic event. Will the millions of people in attendance to see Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the United States make it the greenest inauguration in history, or simply pollute it more?

According to Inauguration Committee spokeswoman Linda Douglass, “Just as we are committed to making this the most open and accessible inauguration in history, we are also committed to making it the most environmentally sensitive,”.

Speaking to FoxNews.com, Ms. Douglass said “This will be the greenest inauguration in history, because we have tried to be mindful of the potential effects on the environment that a large crowd could have. We are trying to do everything we possibly can to return Washington, D.C., to the same state in which we found it and to reduce our own footprint as much as we can.”

18,000 Volunteer, You Can Too

Thousands of people have volunteered help make this inauguration the greenest in history.  Volunteer duties include picking up trash, recyclables and even horse manure along the Mall in Washington after Obama takes the oath of office.  100 of those volunteers will be walking the grounds to collect trash and recyclables from you directly, metallic heat sheets will be donated to the homeless after the inauguration, and horse manure will be sold to a local farm.

It’s not too late to volunteer either.  The official inauguration website, Pic2009.org, has a simple form one can fill out if you want to volunteer in some way.

Critics Say Just Political Posture, Good Behavior

The Institute for Liberty, a conservative think tank, estimated recently that the millions of people coming to the inauguration will generate a half-billion pounds of carbon dioxide — 260 million pounds from the 600 private jets that will come to Washington, and another 260 million pounds from personal vehicles. It says the pollution amounts to more than 575 million pounds of CO2, which would take the average U.S. household 57,598 years to produce.

However, The Institute for Libery did not disclose how these figures were derived, which leaves their merit in question.

Yet the undeniable fact is that whenever large amount of people gather for an event, more energy is being used and pollution created than if you had just stayed home.  So the question is whether the thousands of volunteers can completely offset this crowd impact on the environment, and achieve the “leave the place better when you leave than when you found it” slogan.

EPA Has Faith In Volunteers

Ryan Smith, EPA liaison to the Presidential Inaugural Committee, said attention to recycling and trash removal does make a difference.

“I think we’re doing a lot of good things. I’m really proud of some of the creative and innovative answers that the PIC came up with when confronted with budgetary concerns and research concerns and security concerns,” Smith said.

“They really did a lot of things to weigh the cost and the benefits of doing some environmental good, and ultimately this is a public awareness issue. They’re taking a lot of steps to do things very publicly that show that they are taking steps to mitigate some of the environmental concerns.”