The current hot topic – the London 2012 Olympics. The games return to the UK for the first time since the summer of 1948 and it’s safe to say that there was certainly some excitement about it when it was announced that the largest sporting event on Earth would be coming to these shores.
When London made its bid for the games, it described a London olympics as ‘a one planet olympics’, flirting with the concepts of sustainability, carbon neutrality, and generally being the ‘greenest olympics in history’. Now I’m going to say straight away, I don’t have the figures to prove or disprove whether London 2012 is in fact the greenest ever olympics. What I do have though, is some interesting information on the general environmental state of the London 2012 games.
Lets start with the Aquatics Centre. An effort was made to ensure that construction materials used were sustainably sourced from the UK. This includes steel from North Wales and under-floor heating from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and 30,000 sections of low-carbon ethically sourced Red Lauro timber. The roof design (the wave) is made of steel, covered in aluminium half of which has been recycled. The audience seats are made from a reduced chemical plastic and where possible the impact on the environment generated by moving goods to the Olympic Park has been reduced. For example, the pool tiles were transported into Stratford by train.
It isn’t just the Aquatic Centre which is built in an environmentally considerate way. Built using low-carbon concrete (a 40% reduction in the use of carbon), and even the decorative Olympic rings on the roof of the stadium made from recycled gas pipes, the Olympic Stadium is described as the greenest ever. When compared with previous Olympic stadia,the London stadium is 75% lighter in terms of steel. Other ‘green’ features in the Olympic park include 3,000 square metres of recycled copper cladding on the Handball Arena and the 100% natural ventilation system in the cycling Velodrome.
However the sustainable legacy of the Games as well as the expected CO2 emissions produced by the event has been questioned by some. The London Assembly’s environmental committee is to conduct its own independent review – “Bold promises were made about how environmentally friendly the Stratford site will be. We want to investigate how these commitments on its legacy will be fulfilled once the excitement of the Games is over.” Source: (http://www.earthtimes.org/going-green/how-green-london-olympic-games/1195/)
One of the main issues with London 2012’s ‘green’ agenda is that it is based upon carbon offsetting – the idea that whatever you pollute, you simply offset this pollution by investing in an environmental project elsewhere. This isn’t the greatest way to be environmentally friendly, really you should be focused upon reducing your own emissions, not playing them off somewhere else. There has also been a noticeable shift in attitude towards being carbon neutral, with the Olympic organisers now choosing to use language such as ‘reduce’ and ‘mitigate’ rather than all out neutrality. This begins to beg the question, how committed is London 2012 to being the ‘greenest’ games yet?
Recent estimates suggest that London 2012 will produce 3.4million tonnes of CO2 in two weeks, to put this into perspective the UK approx produces 550million tonnes per year. It is difficult to say whether this is good or bad, as no other host city has attempted to track the emissions it produced and as London has never hosted an event such as this, there is no benchmark.
Whilst much praise has been heaped onto the organisers by the independent environmental committee for their commitment to recycling and other key environmentally friendly measures, there has also been criticism for their slow uptake on alternative energies such as biogas which could have created a zero/low-carbon energy source for the games.
2012 is significant because it marks the final year of Britain’s first carbon budget. The budget commits the UK to legally binding emissions cuts, and if London fails to stage a low-carbon Olympics, it would prove highly embarrassing. Source: (http://www.actionsustainability.com/news/174/2012-Olympics-a-mixed-record-so-far-on-environmental-issues/).
To round this piece off, here is the Guardians summary of original pledges and their realities: (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/24/london-olympics-pollution-fine-ioc)
Air quality
Pledge: London signed up to the Olympic host contract which specifies that the city must meet international pollution laws.
Reality: Olympic route will impact heavily on air quality making London more likely to breach laws unless it bans 30% of all cars.
Construction
Pledge: 90% of demolition materials to be reused or recycled, half of all materials to be brought in by rail and local waterways and at least 20% of recycled material to be used to build permanent venues and the Olympic village.
Reality: 95% of the buildings and infrastructure on the Olympic site was crushed and melted, but only around 1% reused. £20m was spent restoring a canal to ship 12,000 tonnes of waste and building materials a week, but only 3,000 tonnes were shipped on them in the first two years.
Athletes’ village
Pledge: To make the village of 8,000+ homes energy self-sufficient.
Reality: Numbers reduced to 4,700 and homes built to Level 4 – good for UK but not the best possible.
Waste
Pledge: To achieve a ‘zero-waste’ games by reducing waste, recycling and sending nothing to landfill.
Reality: Plans watered down. Some food waste to be sent to landfill in Bedfordshire, 30% to be incinerated. No catalysation of nearby authorities to improve waste policies.
Energy use
Pledge: To generate 20% of energy on site from renewables.
Reality: The Olympic park to only produce 9% of its post-games energy from renewables. About 1,000 homes in surrounding areas to be insulated. Plans for wind turbines in Hackney and at Eton manor abandoned.
Olympic flame
Pledge: A low-carbon Olympic flame and torch.
Reality: EDF energy announcement expected soon.
Decontamination
Pledge: The site was heavily contaminated and 2.5sq km of contaminated land and 1.4m tonnes of soil had to be cleaned or remediated.
Reality: Independent assessors argue that more than 7,000 tonnes of radioactively contaminated material dumped in a former landfill site has been buried.
Wildlife/Park
Pledge: To create Europe’s largest urban park.
Reality: 300,000 wetland plants grown in Norfolk and Wales. Almost 2,000 newts and hundreds of toads plucked from the site’s wetlands and waterways. But anger in Greenwich where hundreds of trees will be affected, and the park closed for several months. Future problems could include erosion of park to make way for more housing.
Food
Pledge: To serve “the best of British” food.
Reality: Cadbury, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are the main sponsors, but millions of meals will be prepared by caterers. Hopes that all food would be organic, British and Fairtrade have been watered down. Dutch brewer Heineken have “pouring rights”, which means no branded British ale will be sold on the 40 sites.
Carbon footprint
Pledge: To encourage visitors to come by train.
Reality: Event tickets to include London Underground travelcard.
Hopefully this has been interesting, and I would encourage you to read further around the topic if you’re interested. You’ll find the official London 2012 Olympic environmental impact statements with a simple google search of ‘environmental impact of london 2012 olympics’, but if you do decide to read them, be warned they’ll be extremely long and boring – best to read the technical summary!
Jack.
I am a freelance environmental author with an MSc and BSc in Environmental Sciences from The University of East Anglia. Just trying to develop social media as an effective platform for communicating and engaging with people on all things green... Please get in touch with me if you are interested, I am willing to discuss any proposals.
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