London East, UK - 'Community is at the heart of the 'drive for sustainability' and so legacy is seen as an absolutely crucial objective, which must not fail. Yet, in truth, the sustainability story of the project so far is a mixed one. There have been huge successes, such as the recycling of more than 90 per cent of materials on-site - no mean feat given the vast areas of contaminated land presented to the ODA. Carbon emissions across the project, when constructed, will be half the level set by current building regulations; the Olympic Village will be 25 per cent more energy-efficient than legislation requires and built to some of the highest sustainability objectives we have. Thousands of square yards of green roofs will attenuate rainfall and add biodiversity. Half of all deliveries to the site have been made by rail, not road. Two energy plants on-site will burn biomass as well as gas, for heat and power. Facilities such as the Velodrome will be naturally ventilated and naturally lit, drastically reducing power consumption. Most impressive is that there is no car-parking provision for the Games; the London Olympics will be an exclusively public transport event. Lord Coe, the chairman of Locog, has committed the ODA to the greenest Olympics yet.
Yet there are some howling failures. The promise of a wind turbine has evaporated because of health and safety concerns. The natural lighting of the buildings seems to be negated by the requirement for hundreds of super-high-intensity lamps demanded by television stations for high-definition transmission. The commitment to the green transport of materials to the site by thousands of barges materialised in practice as a handful; John Armit, the chairman of the ODA, admitted this month that deliveries by water didn't meet 'the wishes of the haulage industry. The simple and honest answer is that it is difficult to make the business case stack up for bringing large quantities by barge.'
The question that haunts a 'green' 2012, the elephant question that is bigger than any of the stadiums, is why do we continue to do this? Why, every four years, do we move the Olympics around the world at huge environmental and infrastructure costs, reproducing one semi-useless sports carcase after another? It may be time to consider the full life-cycle credentials of the Olympics and make them more properly sustainable by keeping them in one place. In Greece, for example, where the Games originated. Right now, their economy could do with an even larger boost than ours'. . .
