As the summer of 2011 winds down, the 2012 Olympics – set to launch in London on July 27 – seem pretty far off. But for the organizing and planning teams behind the massive event, many of which have been at work on the Games for five years or more, next summer can’t come soon enough. So far, just about everything is going according to plan, and organizers achieved their goal of completing all the major venues a year in advance.1 At the one-year-to-go mark, what makes the progress to date even more impressive is that London has done it all with an unprecedented commitment to sustainability and a constant eye on the environmental impact of its decisions and actions. Here are just a few highlights of this effort:
- The 100+ acre Olympic Park has been responsibly developed, with a focus on natural biodiversity.2
- All of the buildings and structures created will be used long after the Games come to an end for purposes beyond the Olympics.3
- Organizers established the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, an independent group that acts as a watchdog and issues regular reports on progress toward the sustainability goals of the Olympics.4
So then, will the Summer 2012 London Olympics be the most sustainable Olympics ever? Let’s look at the planning so far…
The main stadium for the London Olympics5
London’s Bid for the Summer 2012 Olympics
How have the organizers – the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) – followed through on plans for a more sustainable Games? One of the keys was an early start. The application process for 2012 began just a few years into the new millennium, even before Athens completed its preparation for the 2004 Olympics. Many of the prospective host cities stressed environmental concerns in their pitches, partly because of the positive attention that Sydney received for its sustainability efforts in 2000.6 The London team had clearly learned from this example and prepared accordingly. Its chief environmental expert, David Stubbs, said in a 2004 interview that “The IOC [International Olympic Committee] is looking to see that bringing a Games to a city provides some benefits to that city in terms of long-term infrastructure, sporting legacy and, hopefully, an environmental legacy.”7
Stubbs and his team started their planning even before the official announcement of London’s bid in 2003. Stubbs, who had gained experience as an environmental advisor for the Sydney Games, outlined the two core components of his initial strategy: “Firstly, get the right experts around us to have a good technical bid and, secondly, engage with the environmental community so that they felt part of the process.”8 These steps were crucial in order to gain momentum. An environmentally strong bid that wasn’t feasible would be a failure, and an effort that ignored sustainability advocates would alienate an important group and limit their chances to reduce their environmental footprint. Stubbs’ approach was evident in London’s “high-powered” environmental pitch to the IOC, which impressed Committee members because of its “strong emphasis on the integration of environmental considerations across all aspects of planning and operations.”9
Small Setbacks
In the years since London was awarded the 2012 Games, it has made steady and impressive progress toward its goal of setting new environmental standards for Olympic events. LOCOG has focused on almost every conceivable aspect of sustainability, from promoting healthy and active lifestyles to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.10 But despite their best efforts, the organizers have had some issues with their energy sources.
LOCOG had set ambitious renewable energy goals and aimed to produce 20% of the energy required for the Games through renewable sources.11 At the center of this plan was the construction of a wind turbine that would have provided significant amounts of energy for the Olympic venues. That project had to be abandoned as engineers ran into regulatory and industry complications, but organizers pledged to find new ways to incorporate alternative energy technologies.12 With the loss of the turbine, the latest report suggests that renewable energies will make up only about 9% of the total energy needed to run the event.13
Controversy
Organizers have also recently faced a controversy as a result of a sponsorship agreement with Dow Chemical Company. Dow agreed to create a sustainably-made “wrap” for the main Olympic stadium, but many are now protesting this deal because of a tragic poisonous gas leak in 1984 in Bhopal, India caused by Union Carbide Corporation, a company that Dow bought in 2001.14 This gas leak killed thousands of people and sent thousands more to the hospital. Many of those that survived faced permanent blindness, organ failure, and a variety of other conditions.15 Dow representatives maintain that the tragic event should not be focused upon because it happened many years ago, a decade and a half before the company acquired Union Carbide. Others disagree, arguing that Union Carbide’s negligence in the aftermath of the leak led to a toxic environment with consequences that are still very present today. For now, at least, there is no indication that Olympic organizers will cancel the deal with Dow.16
Impressive Progress So Far
Even with the Dow controversy and the failure to meet its renewable energy goals, the planning process for the 2012 Olympics has so far been a spectacular success. LOCOG has overseen a team that cleaned 2 million tons of contaminated soil, cut 100,000 tons in carbon emissions, and even convinced McDonalds to adopt sustainability policies for its new restaurants around the Olympic site.17;18
The organizers have certainly learned some valuable lessons in the process. Reflecting on the past few years, David Stubbs stressed the importance of flexibility and adaptability. He noted that where his team had identified very rigid targets – such as the 20% renewable energy goal – they had sometimes come up short. But in other areas, new innovations and discoveries during the planning and construction processes allowed for sustainability improvements that no one had considered back in 2004.19 Stubbs commented, “I think the environmental benefits from our approach [are] far greater than if we had stuck to the very letter of the bid commitment and done nothing else.”20 His strategy has worked extremely well so far, and it will be exciting to follow London’s continuing progress through the start of the Games – now less than a year away!
