Used coke cans, green grass, and the smell of compost don’t quite equate to the Youth Olympic Games (YOG).

But on Oct 31, The Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee (SYOGOC) rallied Singaporeans together, to drum up awareness for a greener environment and a greener YOG.

CAN! Green, in conjunction with the South West district of Singapore’s Clean and Green event, drew families, students, and members of the public from all walks of life to HortPark for a day of fresh air and warm sunshine.

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The CAN (Create Action Now)! Festivals are held to celebrate the YOG, create awareness of and promote the YOG to members of the community.

If you don’t already know, the first-ever YOG is to be hosted by Singapore, come Aug 2010. CAN! Green is the festival in its third quarter, its theme – Environmental Friendliness.

For an event flying in representatives from 205 countries the world over (countries such as The Gambia, New Zealand, and Columbia), the inaugural sporting event most definitely needs to work on decreasing its carbon footprint in every other area possible.

There was plenty going on – dancing, drumming, recycling, giving away plants potted into used drink cans, and even an eco-fair where crazily enough, you could’ve bought environmentally-friendly refrigerators, laptops and washing machines. Talk about your business opportunities…

Apart from the sale of (green) electronic appliances, the rest of the activities were carried out by members of the community – schools were brought in to set up booths, dance school students were invited to entertain the crowd, and young volunteers with the YOG were also there to facilitate the activities.

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UrbanWire spoke to Ms Han Liang Yuan, the Director of Communications and Public Relations at SYOGOC, about the YOG reaching out and involving the community in its activities.

“To reach out to more people, the YOG holds the CAN! Festivals, each with its different themes. This will help people to learn about and identify the YOG with these different themes”, she said.

The past 2 CAN! Festivals’ were themed Culture (CAN! Discover) and Digital Media (CAN! Click) respectively. The theme of the fourth and last festival, to be held between Jan to Feb 2010, will be Arts.

They certainly do sound educational, but Singaporeans don’t exactly need to be educated on the environment, do they? After all, the great national pastime is completely clean and very green – joining a queue for freebies.