Article taken from the International Herald Tribune. To view article click here Gold is not the only colour Britain will be striving for as it gets ready to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. Planners are billing the London Games as the greenest ever, with environmental concerns a top priority at every phase of the preparations, from pouring concrete to designing souvenirs. Promises of environmental sustainability were central to London's winning Olympic bid, and supporters say the green efforts go hand in hand with another of the organizers' key commitments: the hope of using the Games to revive East London and leave residents with a legacy of usable new infrastructure.
After Beijing's 2008 extravaganza, London is taking a leaner approach, with far fewer new facilities planned. Organizers say everything they build must have a meaningful post-2012 afterlife, and they are seeking to minimize new construction by using existing buildings where possible.
That less-is-more ethos will likely be reinforced by the belt-tightening that the global economic downturn is expected to force on the Games. Environmentalists say doing less is also very green. Huge amounts of energy are needed to produce steel and concrete for new structures, and campaigners say that although China's planners deserve credit for providing renewable power at the Beijing Games, any carbon savings were vastly outweighed by extensive building.
The 2012 organizers hope that the builders and other contractors will be motivated to apply their Olympian standards to non-Olympic projects, too. They have created a new category of corporate sponsorship, and so far four "sustainability partners" have pledged to help minimize the environmental footprint of the Games. Environmental advocates say they will also push those companies - BT, BP, EDF Group and Nortel - to make their own business practices greener.
Shaun McCarthy, chairman of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 that is monitoring the preparations, said huge events like the Olympics can do real environmental damage. Still, by using them as a platform to influence industry and the public, "you can actually have a positive impact that far outweighs the negative impact of having the Games in the first place," he said.
By demanding, for example, lighter and more energy-efficient buildings, concrete incorporating recycled material and the reuse of 90 percent of demolition rubble, the Olympic contracts are pushing the British building sector to get durably greener, McCarthy argued.
Companies seeking contracts are even offering to exceed the requirements of the Olympic Delivery Authority, said Simon Lewis, 2012 program manager at the British arm of WWF, the global conservation organization. The authority, he said, "is using competition to increase sustainability."
One consequence is that concrete being used for Olympic sites produces about half the carbon emissions as the material used in a recently completed terminal at London Heathrow Airport, McCarthy said. Other companies, including the retailer Marks & Spencer, "have gotten onto that, and said 'O.K., we want to get concrete in the same way,"' he said.
Still, some worry that planners may cut environmental corners when finances get squeezed. Paul de Zylva, head of Friends of the Earth in Britain, who advised on the 2012 bid, questioned whether the organizers' passionate environmental commitment extended all the way to the Olympic Board.
"When push comes to shove," he said, if the government cuts financing, "if you really want to make progress on something that you think is going to be an exemplar of sustainability, are you going to find a way of including that?"
Sue Riddlestone, director of BioRegional, an environmental group that helped draft the Olympic bid, said she shared that concern. But she argued that with good planning, a green Games did not have to cost more. "People want to see wind turbines or photovoltaic panels, and these things are good," she said, but often more benefit comes from low-investment solutions "like having more insulation or not building as much."
Riddlestone said she was disappointed that the planners had not raised their carbon-cutting targets since winning the bid in 2005, for example by adopting the more recent government policy of requiring all new buildings to be zero carbon, starting with homes in 2016. Dan Epstein, head of sustainability at the Olympic Delivery Authority, acknowledged that criticism.
"We're not the most-forward innovators, because we've got to deliver something by 2012," he said. "We're getting best practice, not new practice."
Nonetheless, he said the Olympic building program had tighter green requirements than any other major British project.
"We're sending a signal out to the market that this is what others are going to ask you for, so people are using it as a way to really gear up and sort out their own supply chain," he said. Companies providing everything from windows to timber have already changed the way they do business, Epstein said.
The authority wants its work to make both environmental and social improvements to the Stratford neighborhood and the Lower Lea Valley, the host areas. Workers are cleaning two square kilometers, or about three-quarters of a square mile, of industrial brownfield land, Epstein said.
Before starting that work, they relocated thousands of newts, frogs and other species to temporary homes, along with the seeds of local plants. These will all be returned later as part of a 100-hectare mix of wetlands, meadows and other habitats that is described as the largest new park in Europe.
Energy is another major focus. Wind turbines and a biomass plant will generate 20 percent of the Games' energy locally, while the electricity supplier EDF has promised that the rest will come from renewable sources.
Epstein said the Olympic facilities would be 15 percent more energy-efficient than building regulations required. Also planned is a combined cooling, heating and power plant: instead of wasting the heat created while generating electricity, it will be used to warm and cool buildings and provide hot water.
The authority is also looking for ways to generate power from organic waste produced by London households, Epstein said. It hopes to reduce water use and create a nonpotable water network for flushing toilets and other nondrinking functions, saving the energy that would be needed to treat water to levels required for consumption.
Epstein said those things would put East London on a greener post-Games footing as residents fill 3,000 new homes planned at the athletes' village and as many as 9,000 more that the government hopes will follow nearby. Such long-term changes are crucial to the value of the Olympic effort, said Lewis, the WWF program manager.
"How can we create something that from 2013 to 2050 is actually going to be reducing the footprint of the people who live in that area?" he asked. "And how can we scale up that approach and make it the new blueprint for what happens elsewhere?"
Planners say public transportation improvements for the Games will extend beyond them. A high-speed train will temporarily link St. Pancras station, where Eurostar passengers arrive from the Continent, to the Olympic venues, and other rail improvements are also in the works. There will be no parking lots at the main Olympic, site and organizers will encourage visitors to walk, bike or take public transit.
The planners also hope that their procurement and service contracts will prod the events-planning industry to go greener. Organizers are beginning work on their goal of sending no waste to landfills during the Games, said David Stubbs, head of sustainability at the 2012 organizing committee. So potential suppliers are getting notice now that things like food packaging, flyers, banners and decorations must be reusable or recyclable. Volunteers' uniforms, merchandise, food and scores of other items will be sustainably and ethically sourced and nontoxic, Stubbs said.
"Companies that are wising up to this are basically fitter for long-term business," he said.
Sustainability sponsors, who pay for the designation, will also help green the Games, Stubbs said. EDF is looking for a low-carbon fuel to power the Olympic flame and BT says it will run the communications networks with low-carbon electricity. The companies, naturally, hope to get a marketing payback from the link with Olympic environmentalism.
"If London 2012 is looked back on as being the greenest Games ever run, we will have a brand association in helping make that happen," said BT's chief sustainability officer, Chris Tuppen. Gareth Wynn, 2012 director at EDF, said it would use the Olympic association to encourage its customers to go greener. Campaigners intend to make sure there is more than just talk.
McCarthy cited the example of Coca-Cola, which is fulfilling a promise made after the 2000 Olympics in Sydney to reduce use of refrigerators containing climate-damaging hydrofluorocarbons.
"If we can use the Olympics to embed some very big sustainability commitments from these companies," said Lewis, the WWF program manager, "you very quickly get very big benefits."