Beyond the Finish

a greenfutures Special Edition

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Can London 2012 give sustainability a sporting chance?

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Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director, Forum for the Future, and Chair of the London 2012 Sustainability Ambassadors Group. This Group of eight was established to bring the importance of sustainability at the Games to people’s attention.

Photo: LOCOG

The London 2012 Park: A river runs through it, designed to attract otters and wagtails, as well as spectators

What does it mean for London to have organised “the most sustainable summer Olympics of modern times”? It’s a claim, incidentally, with which our small group of Sustainability Ambassadors for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games feels entirely comfortable. But for all those who still remain sceptical about the idea of the Games and sustainability being brought together in the same sentence, here’s how I see the nature of the challenge.

Invite thousands of the world’s finest athletes to compete together, watched by nine million spectators globally in the presence of the world’s most demanding media. Locate the whole show (well, much of it) in one of the most deprived areas of your capital city, on some of the most contaminated and derelict land it’s possible to find. Undertake to make all the buildings and infrastructure required, and all the services provided to stage such a jamboree, meet the highest possible sustainability standards. Give yourselves just seven years to marshal all the money needed, employ the best possible staff, procure billions of pounds’ worth of goods and services, and mobilise tens of thousands of volunteers – with sustainability at the heart of the entire operation – and that’s the London 2012 Games!

Back in 2005, I was part of the team that presented the sustainability case for London to the International

Olympic Committee, based on WWF and BioRegional’s Vision of a One Planet Olympics (I was a Trustee of WWF-UK at the time). Eight years on, as the Olympic Park takes shape and some of the venues are put to serious use for the very first time, and I think people are, at last, starting to understand what’s really entailed in hosting the Games.

There has been lots of recent coverage in the media about the ancient Olympics, and how “pure” and “uncluttered” everything was in those distant days. No sponsors required then! And there is, inevitably, something about the scale, cost and commercialisation of the modern Olympics that is difficult to deal with, raising inevitable sustainability dilemmas and trade-offs.

But one thing is not in doubt. The progress made in delivering these Games more sustainably than ever before has brought forward an extraordinary quality of leadership and shared purpose from everyone involved, including the sponsors, and particularly from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) and the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA). We’ve set out to showcase some of that leadership in this Special Edition, and to refer people on to other information resources, including the London Legacy Development Corporation, in order to get the fuller picture.

By 10 September, it will all be over. As Tim Smit says [right], Rio de Janeiro then picks up the sustainability baton, leaving Londoners with an impressive legacy and a sustainability story that does credit to that early vision.

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Photos: LOCOG ; Marc Hill / Apex ; Laurent Geslin / Nature Picture Library

“An extraordinary quality of leadership”

I became an Olympic Sustainability Ambassador in the full knowledge that the contributions the team would make would be bound by the pragmatic requirements of representing a movement and structure that had become a commercial behemoth, and to which sustainability was an add-on.

Sustainability was a core part of the bidding process in Singapore, and Britain is extremely fortunate to have a team that is fired as much by idealism as commerce. The work they have done has exceeded my wildest expectations.

There is a phrase that says if you can’t measure it, you can’t control it. History will show that the team has broken a huge amount of ground in creating metrics that enable many things to be measured for the first time. It has also been completely transparent in showing where such metrics didn’t exist and frankly admitting that what it has done is in some cases a best guess as to how one might go about it.

So, for the first time, we have a menu that can be used by any event in the world to benchmark its performance, alongside a manual which clearly demonstrates how to go about it. From now on there are no excuses. The Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games will benefit massively from the framework. And, most importantly, sustainability is now central to the project management of such events.

From construction decisions which allow buildings to be dismantled and moved on for reuse elsewhere, to astonishing architecture which will be long-lasting and have a low-carbon impact,

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this team has raised the bar. From the manufacture of soil and the onsite management of waste, to energy management systems, from measuring refrigerants to assessing the biodiversity impacts, it has raised the bar.

To me, the ultimate accolade comes from the birds. The restoration and replanting of the river is breathtaking. A septic mess of rubbish and poison has been turned into a landscape of which Constable would have been proud – and the plantings are of a standard that would make any of us proud.

The mass immigration of birdlife is testament to this and the team has every reason to smile with quiet satisfaction, knowing that Londoners 100 years from now will walk these paths and enjoy themselves in a natural haven no one could previously have imagined. Five stars and open the Babycham, I say!

Tim Smit is Chief Executive and Co-Founder of the Eden Project, and a London 2012 Sustainability Ambassador.

“The ultimate accolade comes from the birds”

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Restoration drama

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hogweed, ground-swallowing Japanese knotweed and the voracious Chinese mitten crab – all wildlife, yes, but not the sort to celebrate.

Converting this into an ecological park meant starting, literally, from the ground up. Nearly two million tonnes of contaminated soil had to be lifted and washed clean before any construction could begin. Then the slow process of habitat creation started; taking the best of what was already there (which sometimes meant lifting plants from the ground, keeping them alive, and then transplanting them back into the same site once construction was complete) and adding elements that were missing.

The sheer scale of that is impressive: nearly 700 bird and bat boxes, 4,000 trees and over 400,000 plants and bulbs have been carefully installed, planted or replanted to create a densely woven mix of habitats. These include reed beds, wet woodlands, annual and perennial wildflower meadows, and even manicured lawns, designed to be home to everything from kingfishers, herons, linnets and swifts to grass snakes, lizards, bats and honey bees. And through it all flows a river, resurrected from the narrow, canalised drain it had become: now a broader, free-flowing refuge, ideal for eels, potentially water voles, and even otters. It protects human habitat too: the whole valley has been designed to soak up the rain slowly before it can turn into a flood, restoring the function it once held in its natural state.

Where possible, London’s ecological past has been brought to life. The swathes of wildflowers echo the hay meadows which once ringed the capital; the willow pollards reproduce a common

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Photo: John Miller / Corbis

“I can’t believe they’re just going to concrete it all over for the sake of a bunch of blokes running round a track.”

Such was the blunt opinion of one resident of Stratford, living on the fringes of the Lea Valley in East London, soon after the location for the Games had been announced.

She wasn’t alone. Local allotment holders were outraged at the prospect of being swept off their sites. Writer Iain Sinclair bemoaned the loss of one of his beloved ‘edgelands’: scruffy swathes of wasteland mixed with allotments and workshops; little relics of ‘real’ London yet to be colonised by corporate blandness. It wasn’t a wasteland bereft of wildlife, either. There were patches of woodland and wild flowers. Old industrial sites had sprouted tangled jungles of shrubs and greenery. Birders had spotted snipe, warblers and cuckoos…

Green regeneration was at the heart of London’s winning bid for the Games, but it was clear that the organisers’ own green credentials were going to come under some tight scrutiny. Could they really combine a slick sporting venue with a natural landscape rich in wildlife?

There was certainly work to do. The site sprawls across the valley of the River Lea as it slides its way south to the Thames. A natural floodplain, this had long ago been drained for market gardens to supply the burgeoning capital. These in turn had gradually been replaced with workshops and depots, many of which had slipped into dereliction, leaving a legacy of petrol, tar, arsenic and other toxins leaching slowly into the soil and water. Some of the lushest vegetation, too, was distinctly alien. Poisonous giant

Photo: LOCOG

Can the Olympics leave a landscape richer than before?

Martin Wright reports on the quest for a restorative Games.

sight along the banks of the Thames and the Lea. And the whole is designed to complement wider biodiversity plans for the city.

The finished site is, ecologically speaking, a work of two halves. The northern part is more of a nature reserve than an urban park, a fen-like patchwork of reeds, woods and marshlands. The south – where the bulk of the permanent structures lie – is more municipal. But even here, the emphasis is on biodiversity: grey wagtails and black redstarts are nesting, and the neatly trimmed lawns conceal a rich variety of grasses.

Already there are signs that the wildlife is moving in. Kingfishers, pipits, wheatears and stonechats are among the many birds to have made an appearance, and a short-eared owl was even spotted winging its way between the stands in the main stadium. Otters have yet to rear their heads, but as this elusive mammal slowly creeps back from its West Country retreats, organisers are hopeful that it will some day take up residence in one of the specially constructed holts in the riverbank.

While the Olympic Park is a case study in recreating rare habitats, other sites set a tough test in protecting existing ones. When Surrey’s Box Hill was unveiled as the location for cycling races, local conservationists were horrified, conjuring up the prospect of cycling fans trampling over chalk downland and its rare orchids and insects.

In response, Games organisers LOCOG worked in close partnership with the landowners, the National Trust, and the official nature conservation body, Natural England, to ensure all the key sensitive areas and species were identified and located.

This involved a thorough ecological survey, which uncovered previously unrecorded species in the area, such as the Surrey midget moth, and identified new populations of the small blue butterfly and the straw belle moth. Guided by these discoveries, the spectator viewing areas have been sited away from the most sensitive habitats, and some areas of invasive scrub have been cleared to allow rare chalkland flowers to flourish again as part of a new long-term management plan form the area.

“Box Hill was an object lesson in collaboration”, says Julie Duffus, LOCOG’s Sustainability Manager.

“We had to win the trust of conservationists, who started out very suspicious. And in a way they were right. They knew demand from cycling fans would be massive. So we staged a test event to prove that we could do this without destroying the environment they loved.”

David Stubbs, LOCOG’s Head of Sustainability, insists that conservation has taken priority over maximising spectator numbers and TV coverage.

“Broadcasters initially wanted us to prune back roadside trees to improve overhead camera views.

But we resisted as these interlocking tree canopies over the country lanes also provide important habitat for protected species like dormice, as well as being part of the rural charm of this part of Surrey. It would simply not have made sense to cut these back for what would be effectively a few minutes of viewing.”

Stubbs insists that, far from damaging biodiversity, the Games has provided a trigger to improve it. “Take Weymouth Harbour [site of the sailing]. We knew we had to be careful of the

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impact on the seabed. Anchors from mooring buoys could have made a mess of the eel grass beds, for example, and we knew there were seahorses there, too. So we mapped every inch of the harbour. We now know where every single seahorse lives. That’s proper conservation!”

The effort didn’t stop at the seashore either.

In an intriguing multiplier effect, the coming of the Games boosted conservation efforts well beyond the affected area. The major conservation bodies involved in the area – such as the Dorset Wildlife Trust, Natural England, the Environment Agency and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds – were brought together by the need to respond to Olympic plans. But they then collaborated to set up new protected areas in farmland, wetlands and woods nearby.

The fact that so many mainstream conservation groups have got behind the wider Olympics biodiversity plans reflects the sheer amount of talking that went on between everyone involved. “We had to convince people that we really meant it,” says Stubbs, “and that it wasn’t just something we put in the pitch to boost London’s chances.” It wasn’t easy.

“A lot of people were pretty cynical to start with”, he admits. “They assumed we’d start dropping our commitments once we’d won the bid. So it came as a surprise when we kept producing targets, action plans and so on.”

Not everyone’s satisfied, of course. Some of the campaigners against the removal of century-old allotments, which have disappeared beneath the Velo Park, remain resolutely hostile – unmollified by plans to open new sites after the Games. Others see the questionable record of corporate sponsors as denting any achievements on the biodiversity front.

And it remains to be seen just how rigorously all the long-term plans will be stuck to once the media glare fades post-2012. But meanwhile, it’s hard to argue with the fact that a largely derelict, post-industrial valley on the less glamorous side of town has become an extraordinary experiment in ecological restoration.

And all because of a bunch of blokes running round a track.

Martin Wright is Editor in Chief of Green Futures.

London’s ecological past has been brought to life

Box Hill: collaboration wins out

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Better business?

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originally proposed to source 17,500 mattresses and 6,300 mattress extensions manufactured in China. One of LOCOG’s goals was to buy ‘home grown’ wherever possible, and so it sent Ramler back to the drawing board with CompeteFor, an independent brokerage service set up to give SMEs in London better access to business opportunities at the Games. CompeteFor will outlive the Games, and other public sector organisations are already using it.

But back to beds. Ramler ended up giving the job to Horatio Myers, a company based in Huntingdon, just 68 miles up the road from the site.

And where the springs and foam sprung from was just the start. Ramler also had to provide LOCOG with details of its plans to reuse the mattresses after the event. The majority will go to other major events, student accommodation, hire and rental companies, or be sold to the general public. Any spoilt ones (nerves could run high!) will be transported to a recycling centre in Milton Keynes by vehicles on return journeys. The steel content will be collected by local metal recyclers; polyester, foam and plastic will be reprocessed; natural fibre will go to compost, and the remaining 5-10% of material will be sent for energy recovery. Thanks to the stipulations imposed by the Games, a whole new approach to sourcing and re-use has been designed, tested and proven.

Charged with procurement decisions worth millions of pounds, LOCOG had tremendous power to sway its suppliers, and the sectors in which they operate. But wielding this power effectively was no easy task. Without any tried and tested guidelines to help major event providers navigate their way through conflicting priorities – from cost to carbon to community benefits – they had to chart their own course.

Of course, the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games was also making inroads into this new territory. The Vancouver Organising Committee created a questionnaire to assess the sustainability of suppliers, giving preference to Aboriginal-owned and inner-city companies – but LOCOG was already embarking on its own assessments process as this was being prepared.

Other showcase events, such as the Glastonbury Festival, make a song and dance of their green credentials, but have yet to publish a supply chain assurance mechanism that others can draw upon.

LOCOG’s search for a useful precedent drew a blank – and so inspired the creation of a new British standard, known as BS 8901. This is the world’s first certifiable management system standard on

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Photo: BT

Bedtime procurement stories

With an expected global television audience of around four billion, it’s no wonder that some of the world’s biggest companies signed up to sponsor the Games, while others scrambled to supply goods and services. The association of the Games with certain sponsors is, for some, a large blot on its green aspirations, provoking lively debate about the role and value of corporate sponsorship [see box, ‘Green wave or greenwash?’, p9]. A question much less pondered, but arguably more significant in the long term, is whether the Games offers business an impetus for change. Can companies be transformed for the better by their involvement, and does this set a template for the future? Can major global events colour the corporate playing field a deeper shade of green?

Some observers are deeply sceptical. Duncan Cowan Gray, Olympics programme manager at BioRegional, which helped draw up the sustainability framework for the London bid, is among them. “The corporates have not been improved hugely by [the Olympics]”, he says, adding, “It’s not surprising, because most of them are much bigger than London 2012 in budget or corporate reach.”

But for Phil Cumming, Corporate Sustainability Manager at LOCOG, the proof is in the practice.

“Take mattresses”, he says – pointing to one of the essential furnishings for the Olympic Village. Ramler UK, the supplier of furniture, fixtures and equipment,

Photo: POOL New / Reuters

Corporates fought for the chance to work on London 2012. So, will it leave them ahead of the game? Robin Yapp looks for leadership.

sustainability, specifically designed for the events industry. All relevant Games suppliers have been encouraged, and in some cases required, to work towards full compliance with the standard, and LOCOG itself was independently certified to the standard in 2011.

It was clear that an international standard for events management would be needed if any of the learning was to be passed on, and so LOCOG also supported the creation of ISO 20121. This certifiable management system standard was launched on 15 June 2012, and is something that all future Games, and any other world events, will be able to use.

It’s a big step forward – but it still has its detractors within the industry. Some are concerned that there’s no mandate to use the new standard.

Fiona Pelham, Managing Director of Sustainable Events Ltd and chair of the committee that developed ISO 20121, responds that there is “real potential” if the big players and client organisations insist on compliance. Another concern, though, is whether ‘compliance’ will mean the same thing across the board. There are three different levels for claiming compliance: you can a) certify yourself, b) ask someone with an interest in your organisation to review what you’re doing, or c) have a full independent audit by a competent third party. Pelham says the first option is intended to encourage businesses to strive to improve without significant expense – but critics worry that it could equally encourage companies to self-certify with little intention or effort to change their ways.

Overall, though, Cumming insists that placing high demands on suppliers has been a driver for companies to make positive changes.

Suppliers were required to go beyond ‘tick box action’, he says. LOCOG insisted on checking the sustainability credentials of the supplier, the product and the location where products associated with the Games were produced.

Factories, for example, were reviewed against the requirements of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) Base Code and local law by specialist auditors.

This meant that official licensees seeking approval for London 2012 merchandise were prevented from using 39 factories in 2011 alone until corrective actions had been taken and verified by an auditor.

The majority of these factories were in China and typical breaches of the ETI Base Code or local law identified included inconsistent payment of wages, excessive working hours, and poor standards of health and safety.

So what about the media reports alleging that workers in some factories producing clothing for Games sponsors adidas and others had been systematically mistreated? LOCOG acknowledges that it is clearly not possible to provide a full guarantee that no issues exist at production sites used for the Games: no company could provide such a guarantee. However, Cumming believes that it has taken supply chain engagement and management further and deeper than any previous major event organiser and perhaps many brands.

“The reality”, says Cumming, “is that any brand will find it very difficult to control conditions in factories that are locally managed. The challenge is further

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compounded for an organisation like LOCOG which is temporary and generally several steps removed from the factory.”

Distance from suppliers is no excuse for inaction, and LOCOG recognised this. It developed an innovative Complaints and Dispute Resolution Mechanism for those who feel the LOCOG Sustainable Sourcing Code has not been properly implemented. The aim is to resolve any allegations, rather than simply confirm or rebut them, by putting sustainable remedial measures in place, within agreed timescales. Alongside product and environmental considerations, this process can also be used to address workers’ rights. It’s based on principles for non-judicial grievance developed by the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative on Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, and wide stakeholder consultation, and is supported by an independent Stakeholder Oversight Group.

LOCOG understands that it is the first organisation in the world to have this type of mechanism in place. So, how has it been used?

The first instance arose early in 2012 following allegations about poor working conditions at overseas factories used by licensees to produce London 2012 branded items, including merchandise. While some actions, such as transparency in wages and working hours, will take time to deliver, there have been some immediate improvements as a result. In one case, a Chinese worker in a licensee factory used LOCOG’s Factory Worker Hotline to tip the Organising Committee off about an underage worker. The person in question has now been enrolled in a specialist remediation programme and is back at school.

“Of course, there is still scope for improvement”, says Cumming, “and there are valuable lessons to share.” LOCOG has commissioned an independent review of its approach, looking at how it has managed labour standards in particular. Recommendations will be made available after the Games in late 2012.

Can sponsorship bring social value, as well as visibility?

This is something that all future Games will be able to use

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If procurement and supply are hard work, then sponsorship may by contrast seem an easy ride.

Jon Woods, General Manager at Coca-Cola, Great Britain and Ireland, acknowledges that many sponsors have traditionally viewed high-profile events “as a chance to raise the profile and visibility of their brand – and nothing more”.

His view is confirmed in a report by the independent think tank Demos, ‘Measuring Up’, which revealed that the majority of sponsors across the board make no attempt to measure the impact of their activities. One-third of them blamed the lack of a measurement model, and another third said ascertaining social value was simply not a priority.

As Woods sees it, sponsors do lots of good work which isn’t captured or measured, and so the benefits can’t be assessed. It’s something he wants to change: “Once we understand more about the social value we create”, he says, “we can learn from our experiences and improve.”

Coca-Cola is working with Demos to evaluate its activity using a first-of-its-kind tool, also called Measuring Up, to measure the social value of corporate sponsorship. Max Wind-Cowie and Claudia Wood, who are leading the project at Demos, hope this tool will put an end to excuses, and “help the corporate sector to understand, demonstrate and improve the social value” of highly branded activities. Alongside the standard ‘input–output–outcome’ matrix, the tool prompts corporates to measure the legacy of their sponsorship, recognising the potential for long-term, and even permanent, benefits. Coca-Cola will pilot the new tool as part of its own evaluation exercise.

It’s not just about doing good: there’s a strong business case for such assessment. Woods points to a 2012 poll which shows that over 70% of British adults would feel more positive towards a brand if they knew its sponsorship activity was actually bringing benefit to local communities.

While totting up the value of social improvements may not yet be seen as top priority by some boards, the same could never be said of resource efficiency. And here, the exclusive rights that come with sponsorship are clearly a bonus. Major events like the Olympics offer corporates a king-size test bed for innovation, while tight budgets, timelines and energy targets provide the impetus to trial new solutions and efficiency measures.

Sometimes it’s simply a matter of coordination.

For the first time at a summer Games, there’ll be one network for all the different communications activities, whether it’s scoring and results, mobile phones, internet or media. This network provides seven times the bandwidth of the 2008 Beijing Games, BT claims – but took just 800 on-site engineers to set up, compared with 4,000 in China. It can cope with all the traffic thanks to sophisticated new prioritisation software.

But the real benefit, according to Niall Dunne, Chief Sustainability Officer at BT, is that the local community will get to use it after the event.

Dunne believes it will act as a ‘golden thread’ for Newham, taking a deprived area and making it one of the best places in the UK for communications infrastructure, thanks to its speed and capacity.

And this will create further opportunities, he claims, pointing to research which suggests that people with good ICT skills earn up to 10% more than average.

Another sponsor keen to use the podium to try out new approaches is UPS, logistics partner for London 2012. With a global workforce of more than 400,000 and the ability to reach more than 200 countries every day, it has real clout as a potential sustainability leader. It used the Olympics to experiment with everything from transporting freight by river to installing new telematics software in its trucks [see ‘Jam busting’, p10]. “We’ve been keen to connect what we are doing with the Olympics to our broader European and global sustainability priorities”, says Peter Harris, Sustainability Director for UPS EMEA. “Carbon management is one of those priorities, but another is sustainable city logistics. There are increasing challenges with the way our cities operate because of growing numbers of people: air quality, congestion, noise, waste, all of which are separate from greenhouse gas emissions.” If the Olympics can prove a test bed to help resolve some of those issues, then it will leave a legacy indeed.

BMW Group is also using the challenge of providing transport for the Games as a “unique, live test bed” to explore how emerging mobility technologies will deliver a more sustainable future [see ‘Cool runnings’, p12]. Not only is it supplying a 3,200-strong fleet of hybrids, electric vehicles, clean diesels, motorbikes and bicycles, but – looking beyond the Games – it is busy developing solutions to challenges including congestion and parking. It has founded a venture capital company, BMW i Ventures, to help urban transport networks run more smoothly, using mobile technology. The company has invested in a range of apps, including a car-sharing club and the online marketplace

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ParkatmyHouse, designed to connect available parking spaces with people looking to park. It’s arguably this ‘big picture thinking’ that has kept BMW at the top of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the automotive sector for seven years in a row, making it the only car manufacturer to have appeared in these rankings every year since they were established.

Some changes are yet to come, as businesses take a step back to see how new ways of working and emerging technologies trialled during the Games have paid off. But with the legacies of a new sustainable procurement system and a tool to measure the social value of sponsorship, London 2012 has already blazed a trail for others to follow.

Robin Yapp is a freelance journalist specialising in renewable energy and former Brazil correspondent for The Daily Telegraph.

Green wave or greenwash?

Martin Wright, Editor in Chief of Green Futures, reflects on the role of sponsorship – for the Olympics, and for the magazine.

Photo: BMW Group London 2012 Fleet ActiveE

Packing a punch for the future

Familiar fruit

Photo: StreetGames / The Coca-Cola Company

This network will act as a ‘golden thread’ for Newham

Stretching the sponsors

The involvement of major corporate sponsors in the Olympics has led to some fierce criticism. Notwithstanding the positive impacts outlined throughout this Special Edition, some see it as tarnishing the whole spirit of the Games. Others argue that to take money from businesses involved in oil, or nuclear power, or sugary drinks, or any one of a number of other controversial areas, makes a mockery of London’s claims to be the ‘greenest Games ever’. And some view the exclusive rights awarded the sponsors, along with what are seen as draconian efforts to enforce them, as smacking too much of bullying by the big boys.

These are legitimate questions which deserve a response. They could also be levelled at Green Futures. This Special Edition, like many which we produce, is made possible by the support of a number of partners – in this case some of the London 2012 sponsors.

For the Games organisers, the answer is clear. Without the private investment of the London 2012 sponsors, the staging of the Games simply would not be possible. But they don’t just balance the books, says David Stubbs, Head of Sustainability at LOCOG: they bring valuable support in working towards its sustainability goals.

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“We are proud to partner with companies that will help us achieve our objectives for delivering a truly sustainable Games”, he affirms. “Our sustainability strategy and policies were clearly set out before our sponsors signed up. All sponsors, licensees and suppliers have to adhere to these standards. We are confident that our partners are doing so, and we continue to work with them to ensure we achieve the most sustainable Games possible.”

Stubbs sees delivering the Games as a journey for everyone involved. “We are learning from each other”, he says, “and setting new standards as we go.”

Our view at Green Futures is not dissimilar. We are very happy to receive the support of our partners for this publication. Without such support, we would not have the means to produce and distribute it to a wide range of readers in business, government, the media and elsewhere.

In doing so, we are emphatically not giving a blanket ‘green stamp of approval’ to all of our partners’ activities.

Every single one of our partners on this edition – along with the vast majority of businesses large and small – engages in some activities that are, at present, unsustainable, and which need to change. But each one of them has the potential to be a wholly sustainable

company – even if that might involve some radical changes to achieve it.

And their initiatives around the Olympics, which we are very pleased to feature in ‘Beyond the Finish’, are clear examples of progress towards that goal. They deserve recognition. We hope our coverage encourages others to look at ways to emulate, and improve upon them.

Some might argue that, were it available, funding from another source – government or charitable, say – would be preferable; that it would in some way be ‘cleaner’. I am not sure this is the case. Some of the largest contributors to tax revenues, for example, are businesses which cause huge damage to the environment. And some charitable trusts are themselves endowed with money earned through not entirely sustainable means.

So I am pleased that with this publication – as with all our Special Editions – we are able to be wholly transparent about the sources of our funding.

And when it comes to working with business in general, one thing is certain.

If society is to make the decisive shift towards a sustainable future which is so urgently needed, then we need business – including the world’s major corporations – to play a leading role.

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up by Transport for London (TfL) and a number of the capital’s authorities. Only 1% of all journeys in East London are made by bike – just half the city’s (still low,

by European standards) average. TfL hopes that by promoting cycling heavily in schools and recruiting some high-profile cycle champions, through the London 2012 Active Travel Programme, it’ll provide a kick to the pedals.

London’s waterways, such as the Thames and the Lea, were once its principal freight highways. That’s a role which the Olympics organisers were keen to revive. They dredged a stretch of the Lea to make it navigable by the big barges which ferried construction waste off the site. Logistics company UPS, which is handling the entire logistics of the Games, trialled using barges to transport some of the 750,000 items of furniture required for the Athletes’ Village from its warehouse at the Port of Tilbury to the Olympic Park.

Peter Harris, Director of Sustainability for UPS EMEA, explains that each barge can take the load of 20 container lorries. The trial will help establish the extent to which shifting freight onto the water can cut carbon and other emissions, and so help inform plans for the river’s future.

But no amount of tinkering with top-down modal shift will have much of an impact if people can’t be persuaded to change their travel choices. If all the new infrastructure works as hoped, says the legacy plan, then it could be “a once in a lifetime opportunity to change people’s perceptions of travel”. It could have added that it will be a once in a lifetime essential, too. The height of the Games will see three million more daily journeys than normal in London.

Jam busting

Cue the media predictions of terminal snarl-up.

To keep the city moving, TfL aims to cut by 30% the ‘background’ traffic of those who would normally take public transport. Working with local authorities, Sustrans, the NHS, the Ramblers and others, it is encouraging Londoners to shift to walking or cycling through its Active Travel Programme – or even stay at home altogether. A key feature is high-tech journey planning, with up to the minute information on the length of time different modes of transport will take to get from A to B. TfL hopes that when people realise how quick it is to walk or cycle, for example, instead of their usual habit of jumping on the Tube, they’ll form the sustainable habits of a lifetime.

The same message is going out to business, too.

Groups such as the London Chamber of Commerce and London First are encouraging more deliveries by cycle or on foot, and where that isn’t possible, to streamline them via the use of TfL’s newly launched online freight journey planner. They are also calling on businesses to adopt techniques like homeworking and video conferencing to cut out the need for the daily commute. In February, mobile phone network operator O2 asked a quarter of its 12,000 strong workforce to work remotely, to test the robustness of its IT systems. The company sees flexible working not just as a contingency plan for the Olympics, but as integral to its goal of saving 500,000 miles of travel over the next three years.

All these changes might be triggered by the necessity of avoiding an Olympian-scale jam during a few weeks in 2012 – but the long-term goal is to change the city’s travel habits for good.

The long-term goal is to change the city’s travel habits for good

Bikes in the mix for low-carbon logistics

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Games, the Olympics “provide an incredible opportunity and we must grasp it with both hands”.

For the first time in its (modern) history, the organisers promised that 100% of the spectators, along with most of the workforce, would travel by public transport, bike or foot. (A few exceptions have been made for disabled drivers and taxis.) And 50% of the construction material, too, had to be delivered by rail or barge (the target was smashed with 64% being moved this way). It was an ambitious goal which needed some sleek new infrastructure to get there. Hence the £6.5 billion spent on transforming East London from transport desert to one of the most well-connected parts of town. There’s a second Docklands Light Railway line, a new branch of the East London line, and greater capacity on other routes, too. By comparison, a mere £10 million has been judged enough for 75km of new walking and cycling routes for the area, with the Barclays (‘Boris Bike’) cycle hire scheme being extended to embrace the Olympic Park.

Cycling’s not only the cheaper option – it’s also one with a huge potential for growth. That is the conclusion of a ‘transport legacy action plan’ drawn

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Photos: UPS

It is the biggest peacetime logistical exercise Britain has ever faced – the equivalent of holding 26 world championships simultaneously in the heart of the biggest and busiest city in Europe.

For more than two weeks, nine million spectators and 300,000 athletes, officials and media descend on a city whose aging public transport infrastructure and sclerotic roads network struggles to keep its seven million residents and businesses moving.

Small wonder that in the weeks leading up to the Games, the media was predicting transport chaos: a city-wide traffic jam as the capital’s arteries seize up. And yet the more lasting legacy may be quite the opposite. First, there will be an array of new rail lines and cycleways, and truckloads of freight shifting from road to river, helping ease the flow.

And second, good green habits learned during the Games – some of them out of necessity – could be a tipping point for lasting change.

Far from being a horror story of urban gridlock, says Shaun McCarthy, chairman of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, the independent body set up to monitor the sustainability of the

Photos: Leo Mason / Corbis

Efforts to make sure London keeps moving during the Games could help unjam the city for years to come, says Terry Slavin.

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and that new technologies are making progress”, said New. “It might shine a more balanced light on the debate, particularly in Britain, where it is more distorted than elsewhere. That would be a positive thing.”

Coca-Cola and logistics supplier UPS are both trialling an innovative low-carbon fuel, biomethane. It’s produced from organic waste, in this case derived from landfill. Coca-Cola is using biomethane as the sole fuel for its trucks, and UPS is combining it with diesel for use in its largest fleet vehicles. Both companies will consider rolling it out in their fleets across Europe, depending on how it performs.

“It’s potentially a really exciting fuel”, says Peter Harris, Director of Sustainability for UPS, pointing out that it’s one of the very few low-emission options for heavy goods vehicles. “If you use waste to generate vehicle fuel, then number one you are cutting down on waste, number two you are not using fossil fuels, and number three it makes a dramatic difference to the carbon footprint of the

Photo: MIR

vehicle. It has a great potential.”

Doug Leaf, Business Development Director of Gasrec, the single supplier of biomethane in the UK, explains that it offers a 70% well-to-wheel CO2 saving on standard diesel. At present, it only powers 220 vehicles across the UK, partly because of the extra expense of dual-fuel vehicles, and because a refuelling infrastructure is not yet in place. Leaf believes LOCOG could have done more to promote it. This sense of a missed opportunity is shared

by Shaun McCarthy of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, who said he was “disappointed at the lack of innovation around alternative fuels and the relatively small quantities of advanced biofuel that will be in use”.

Fuel choice is one part of a wider picture, when it comes to keeping road-based emissions down. UPS is also piloting extra-capacity trailers, which allow it to take lorries off the road, and advanced telematics, which gathers information from the vehicle and driver about the day’s operation, so that

improvements can be made the following day. This is a powerful tool for driving a more efficient fleet, Harris says.

David Stubbs of LOCOG says he is encouraged by the way the sponsors are using the Olympics as a test bed for new approaches: “Many of the suppliers are fast-tracking things they may have got round to, but maybe not for another five years or more. That in itself is quite a legacy.”

Katherine Symonds, Head of Sustainable Games at The Coca-Cola Company, agrees. Coca-Cola had a fleet of hybrid vehicles at the Vancouver Winter Games, she says, “but London 2012 has given us a reason to accelerate investments in sustainability for our wider business, and to go the extra mile.

We’re not just doing this for the Games: all our efforts to cut waste and carbon are ultimately about strengthening our business in the long term”.

Terry Slavin is a freelance journalist specialising in business and environment.

BMW Group pavilion in the Park: showcasing the cars of the future

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Photos: xxxxx

Greening the fleet that will ferry and supply the Olympics’ participants is key to London 2012’s sustainability ambitions. For the sponsors, it gives them both a trialling ground and a showcase for innovative technologies.

Assuming they pass muster, it should speed their adoption more widely.

Take BMW, which is providing the full fleet of approximately 3,200 vehicles as part of its role as Official Automotive Partner to London 2012. LOCOG asked for average carbon emissions across the fleet of 120g/km, well below the UK car average of 138.1g/km – but BMW has surpassed this, achieving an average 116g/km. The German car manufacturer, which also owns brands including MINI and Rolls-Royce, has a history of promoting the greener option at sporting events. Back in 1972 it provided an electric car – the 1602 – for the marathon race at the Munich Games.

It sees London as a chance to test the full spectrum of low-emission solutions, from diesel to hybrid and electric cars, to motorcycles and bicycles – and find out how they stand up to the high demand and strict schedules of a world city on show. For Chris Brownridge, UK Marketing Director at BMW, the London 2012 fleet “shows what BMW technology can achieve today in terms of fuel economy and low emissions”.

Most of the London 2012 fleet consists of BMW’s range of Efficient Dynamics diesels, which meet the EU’s new emissions standard (EU6) two years before it comes into force in September 2014. The BMW 320d Efficient Dynamics Saloon emits 109g/km, and makes up almost the half the Olympic fleet, on call for everything from the Torch Relay to medical services and route management for the cycling events.

The fleet also includes petrol hybrids and fuel-efficient motorcycles, plus 200 BMW ActiveE and MINI E electric vehicles, which will shuttle medalwinners from the podium to the press centre. BMW recently completed the largest-ever trial of this technology.

Spectators can visit the company’s pavilion in the Park to get a closer look at the cars of the future. Team coaches and race officials will follow the waterbased sports on BMW Cruise bicycles, and some of the London 2012 workforce may also be seen cruising between

towards its development far beyond that of a corporate social responsibility sideline.

“These are not niche applications”, says New. “We absolutely intend for them to compete with crude [oil] in the future.”

Some of these new biofuels are already close to commercialisation, says New. One is cellulosic ethanol, which uses biochemistry to extract sugars from the entire plant, giving it a 75% carbon saving on conventional petrol. BP has also developed groundbreaking technology to create diesel fuel from sugarcane. And the third fuel is biobutanol, which can be used in higher concentrations than ethanol without compromising engine performance. The biobutanol is being produced in Britain and could eventually be developed at scale here: New explains that BP’s new bioethanol plant in Hull can be converted for this purpose.

The Olympics will be the first time in Europe that these advanced biofuels have been trialled on a large scale. “Hopefully it will be a catalyst in demonstrating to people that biofuels can be done well

Photos: xxxxx

Cool runnings

venues on an electrically assisted folding bike, the Pedelec.

However impressive the range of vehicles and their many applications, they can’t simulate the future in any meaningful way without the right infrastructure. One legacy that will outlive the ambitious fleet is a network of 114 EV charging points, capable of a full charge in just four hours.

Installed across London, these count towards the city’s target of 1,300 public points by 2013, and are the result of a partnership between EDF and GE, working with TfL. But electric isn’t the only green power being piloted at the Games. A range of three new advanced renewable biofuels developed by BP will be trialled at the Games, and are expected to fuel more than 100 of the Games fleet. These fuels offer impressive sustainability benefits which could soon reach the mainstream, explains Phil New, Head of Biofuels at BP. The company has invested $2 billion in its biofuels business since 2006 – demonstrating a level of commitment

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Relay race

Corporation to ensure that most of the communications infrastructure lives on after the Games. It is also involved in the official London 2012 education programme, Get Set, promoting sustainable lifestyles to school children aged 3-19 through a wide variety of activities – from cooking to gardening to team-building competitions. Niall Dunne, Chief Sustainability Officer at BT, has high hopes that it will leave a lasting legacy, “inspiring and supporting people to change the way they build, live, learn, work and travel, to create a more sustainable society.”

Others, too, are looking to use the net to shift behaviour. With the support of resource specialists WRAP, Coca-Cola has set up zerowastevents.org, an “online waste management community”. That may not sound very exciting, but its simple five-step approach to ‘designing out’ waste helps make what often seems an offputtingly complex subject relatively simple to understand.

Coca-Cola’s signature talent, however, is talking to youngsters. It plans to put this to work during the Games through the London 2012 “athlete engagement centre”, encouraging athletes to use social media to talk to their peers about sustainability. “These athletes are coated in stardust”, says Coca-Cola’s Head of Sustainable Games, Katherine Symonds.

“We see them as an incredibly powerful network encouraging global citizenship.” It’s a view echoed

by Matt Sowrey of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which provided initial funding. “They are hugely influential; you will never forget the time you met a gold medal-winning athlete.

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Photos: xxxxx

sharing sites like YouTube.

“Clearly, this Olympic Games is the first of the social media age”, says London 2012 Head of Sustainability David Stubbs. “I cannot quite imagine the ways in which people are going to use social media to communicate around the Games, but it will create a dimension that has not been seen before at an Olympics, as people create their own stories.

What we must do is provide a canvas on which they will be inspired.”

As communications services partner to the Games, BT is supplying the raw material for that canvas. It recently finished installing a network to support 80,000 connections across 94 Olympic venues. BT is working with the Olympic Delivery Authority and the London Legacy Development

Photos: xxxxx

Passing it on, by torch or by tweet

“The green Olympics are pointless” and “Green Olympics really got me thinking on how much I could change the world”, tweeted @KrisMueller4 and @MasonSMOB respectively on 24 April. Trusting that they are in earnest, these statements represent the opposing reactions to London 2012’s attempts to stage “the greenest Games of modern times”.

Olympic organisers are also dubbing this the “One Planet Olympics”, and for good reason: four billion people are predicted to watch the 2012 Games on a wider array of platforms and channels than ever before, from TV to laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones. And despite what the official media partners might want, at least a few will, inevitably, be watching amateur footage on

Photos: Ben Birchall / The Coca-Cola Company

Emily Pacey discovers how social media can fuel the race for behaviour change after the “greenest Games of modern times” has run its final lap.

Using that inspirational power is potentially a huge win for us.”

But that message has to be pitched right.

Renewable energy entrepreneur Dale Vince, who teamed up with footballer Gary Neville to launch Sustainability in Sport, warns that athletes and fans alike have been “virtually untouched by the ecomessage”. So any form of preaching is out of the question. “The worst thing you can do is go in and try to have a worthy conversation”, says Symonds.

Sowrey agrees. “This is a project in partnership with London 2012 that DEFRA initially funded, but now Coke is on board making it fun!” As an example of a non-boring activity, Symonds describes how athletes will be encouraged to use their camera phones to publish pictures of themselves doing a sustainable treasure hunt around the Olympic village, and being rewarded for that.

EDF Energy has already recruited the gold medal-winning cyclist Ed Clancy to promote its Team Green Britain Heroes initiative. Eleven “Heroes” are competing for a £10,000 grant to fund their sustainable initiatives. These include David Green of EcoIsland’s awe-inspiring plan to take the Isle of Wight off-grid, and run it entirely on renewable energy [see GF83, p12]. Savvy use of social media is an essential part of the Heroes project. “The more channels you use, the more you can spread the message”, says Green. “It is a very small team at EDF working on this but they are working flat out”.

Social media is a double-edged sword, of course, and not everyone wielding it is a fan of the way London 2012 is being funded. Three activist groups – the London Mining Network, Bhopal Medical Appeal and the UK Tar Sands Network – have set up Greenwash Gold 2012, using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to target sponsors BP, Dow and Rio Tinto.

But while dissent is fuelling some Olympicinspired actions, other NGOs are opting to run with London 2012, warts and all. Global Action Plan’s Chief Executive Officer Trewin Restorick believes that it’s too good an opportunity to miss. “There is always debate about the ‘ethicalness’ of the companies involved,” he says, “but the potential impact of harnessing the Games outweighs that concern. It’s a great opportunity to engage our audience and we are making every effort to capitalise on it.” GAP has launched a raft of projects including one that encourages teenagers to get involved with community environmental regeneration in the Olympic ‘host’ boroughs. The key role for social media here, says Restorick, is “getting people face-to-face. We find that unless people actually meet up, projects tend to fade away.”

Stubbs admits it’s a “great unknown” whether the Olympics will provide a springboard for greater public engagement in sustainability after the Games. But between the dissenters, LOCOG, the London 2012 partners and the NGOs, this Games is generating a multitude of conversations and projects, some of which will live beyond the event. Ultimately, it matters little whether people are up in arms about greenwashing or delighted that Coca-Cola is sponsoring recycling bins: what matters is that they are talking to each other about sustainability.

Athletes are an incredibly powerful network encouraging global citizenship

Emily Pacey is a freelance writer specialising in futures.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

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Podium perspectives

Aaron Peirsol: Olympic swimmer Aaron Peirsol is a three-time Olympian and seven-time Olympic medalist. He has held several world records, as an individual backstroke swimmer, and as part of the US relay team. In February 2011, Peirsol announced his retirement, saying, “I ended up doing everything I set out to do”.

We asked Olympic, Paralympic and sporting heroes about the future they would most like to see, shaped by the London 2012 Games.

“I remember watching the Games on TV at an early age, and from that moment on thinking all I wanted to do was win a medal in the Paralympics for Britain. I’d love to think that the Paralympics in London can inspire another generation of young children to take up sport. So many opportunities have come my way through my sporting career. The message that you can do something you love, and be the best at it – whether you are disabled or not – is something that is very close to my heart.

London 2012 is the best thing to happen in the capital for a long time. I grew up in Plaistow, not far from where the Olympic Park is now. That part of London had been neglected for a long time, and I think the regeneration of the local area will benefit East London enormously. Now, everyone living there can benefit from the investment that has taken place.

I’ll be working for Channel 4 during the Games, and I’m looking forward to playing my part in getting the country excited about Paralympic sport. Events like the annual BT Paralympic World Cup in Manchester have gone a huge way to raising the profile of disability sport, and disability athletes, in this country as well as internationally. The Games will elevate this even further, and so we really need to capitalise on this opportunity and keep the momentum going beyond 2012.”

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Jill Savery won an Olympic gold medal in synchronised swimming at the Atlanta Games in 1996. She has a Master’s Degree in Environmental Management from Yale, and is currently Head of Sustainability for the America’s Cup Event Authority. Jill also worked for the London-based sustainability charity BioRegional, where she helped to shape the plans for London 2012. She is co-author of the book ‘Sustainability and Sport’, published in 2011.

“Events like the Olympics are special in people’s lives – a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience to be shared for years to come. They are also a great platform to demonstrate the way forward. As I see it, respect for the environment is a core pillar of Olympism. Athletes depend on healthy natural resources: fresh air to breathe, and clean water to swim in.

But communicating this isn’t easy! The spectators are an incredibly diverse target audience: two-thirds of the planet tuned into the Olympic Games in 2008, from 200 different countries.

The London 2012 team has put a lot of thought into messaging to influence visitors during the Games. Coca-Cola has redesigned the waste receptacles for London 2012 to encourage recycling – that’s one example.

The team has also developed valuable tools for the industry.

There’s the carbon footprinting methodology, the Food Vision, the waste management strategy.

I’m working on sustainability with the America’s Cup, and draw on these tools every day.

Now, we have to step up the pace of change. We also have to remember that more major events are being staged in regions that may have fewer resources to put into planning.

The need to support each other and share what we’ve learnt is greater than ever.”

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Ellen MacArthur: Round-the-world sailor In 2005, the sailor Ellen MacArthur broke the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe. In 2010, she announced the launch of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity to inspire people to re-think, re-design and build a sustainable future.

“We live in daunting times and there is a transition to be made towards a system that can work long term. Now is the right moment to be bold. Assume nothing, question everything.

Aim high, be true to yourself, and don’t be put off by the importance of the challenge.”

Personal best Photos: Domenico Stinellis / AP Italy ; Th.Martinez / Sea&Co; Michael Steele / Getty images; Xinhua / Corbis; Ben Radford / Corbis

Ade Adepitan was born in Maryland, Nigeria, in 1973. He contracted polio in his first year, losing the use of his left leg. When he was three, his family moved to Newham, London – now a host borough for the 2012 Games. In 2004, Ade won a bronze medal for basketball at the Paralympics in Athens, and then gold at the 2005 Paralympic World Cup in Manchester. He was an integral part of the delegation that went to Singapore to win the 2012 bid for London, and is a BT Ambassador for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Jill Savery: Olympic swimmer

Photos: Ho New / Reuters; BT ; Jill Savery

Ade Adepitan: Paralympic basketball player

“A swimming pool is like a golf course: it’s a sport that uses a lot of water. I’d like people to begin to take responsibility for this. We had one of the worst droughts in Texas last year. We had rain this spring, but we’re still in a drought. I look at that and it’s hard.

But Olympic pools are always statements. They’re unique and, in a way, works of art. The biggest trick is to make sure you keep using an Olympic pool after the Games. Hopefully the London Aquatics Centre will become a staple of the swimming community.

One thing that is great about every single Olympics is that it bridges cultures. During those few weeks, for the most part, politics is put aside between countries and athletes that might be competing against each other. There’s something very visceral and innocent about the Games itself: it transcends a lot of what may be going on outside.

The biggest thing for people to get out of the Games is to listen to the stories, and understand the adversity that some of the athletes had to go through. For athletes, it’s not necessarily

about any gold medal: it’s about doing something they love, and choosing a lifestyle.

When you look back on your career, the Olympics is a very small thing, it’s important to understand it as a process. Being there is the culmination of decades or more of work. And that’s the magic of it.”

Stefanie Reid, track and field paralympian

Three of the world’s leading athletes describe the change they would most like their sporting endeavours to inspire.

Richard Whitehead, double-amputee runner

Lizzie Armitstead, track and road cyclist

“The power of sport is a massive tool.

It can have a positive impact on your whole life, no matter what your background is, or your age. I think, in respect of that, we need to change how we look at each other. We should support each other to provide a greener and healthier place to live.”

“The change I’d most like to inspire is definitely safer cycling on the roads for all cyclists. Hopefully the increase in popularity of cycling will make the general public more aware and have more respect for cyclists on the road after London 2012.”

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“Something that I struggle with and have to constantly work on is uncompromising belief in myself and my athletic abilities. I don’t go to races to fill lanes. I want to make an impact and be remembered. The one thing I hope my journey in sport inspires is this uncompromising belief in others and their inherent ability to impact their communities for good.

The London 2012 Paralympics is going to change the way the British public view people with disabilities.

They are going to realise that physical disabilities are not synonymous with labels such as weak, sad or misfortunate. The public will be exposed to Paralympians who are eloquent, aggressive, attractive, determined and gifted. I think the nation as a whole will be inspired and forced to rethink old attitudes about human potential.”

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Energy bar

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Photo: LOCOG

Staging a sporting event on the scale of the Olympics was always going to be a highenergy undertaking, in more ways than one.

All those buildings, all those people, all that power…

Squaring this with the lofty aspirations to stage the world’s most sustainable major sporting event was, to put it mildly, a big ask.

And when early plans to supply electricity from an onsite wind turbine were shelved, the critics were swift to pounce, accusing the organisers of breaking a promise to source one-fifth of the site’s energy from on-site renewable sources, settling instead for a measly 11%. Not an impressive start, surely?

For London 2012, however, this change of direction was part of a pragmatic approach, which has seen plans evolve in response to circumstances as the site took shape.

Instead, they provided funding for two community programmes which will see nearly 3,000 local homes and 12 schools retrofitted with the latest in energy efficient lighting and heating controls, insulation, water efficiency measures and smart meters. Over time, this will not only result in greater carbon savings; it will also have a lasting impact on the quality of life of local people. As such, it sums up nicely two central planks of London 2012’s take on sustainability. The first is to secure wins for the local community, and the second is designing for the long term – rather than for high-profile, but possibly short-lived, success.

Another example of this approach is the specially designed Kings Yard Energy Centre on the edge of the Olympic Park, which uses the latest technology to provide a 30% reduction in the carbon footprint of the Park’s heating, cooling and electricity needs.

Although principally gas-fired, it also includes a biomass boiler, which alone saves over 1,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, and the whole plant is designed to be easily converted to use fuel from biogasification, as and when that becomes fully viable. A combination of solar PV panels and mini wind turbines – strikingly sited along the main concourse through the Olympic Park – completes the renewable generation picture.

But the main gains are in efficiency, where a combination of insulation and intelligent design has ensured that all the main buildings exceed minimum regulation standards by at least 15%. This is no small achievement given the very particular needs of each building. The sleek, much-admired Velodrome is the cream of the crop, at 31% more energy efficient than regulations require, rising to 59% when the Energy Centre is taken into consideration.

Photo: LOCOG

London 2012 set out to be a shining example of good green practice on resources and power use.

But has it fulfilled that promise, asks Robin Yapp.

Estimating the emissions of an event yet to take place is no easy task. And so the organisers asked Best Foot Forward – a Queen’s Award-winning consultancy – to develop a new methodology, drawing on a wide range of expert input from LOCOG’s Carbon Technical Advisory Group. The result was a forward-looking (predictive) reference footprint for the Games, which allowed organisers to identify potential major impact areas in advance, and look for ways to avoid them.

The most notable finding was that the largest component of the Games’ footprint came from the embodied carbon in construction materials.

LOCOG used this information to refine its venue designs, procurement strategies and materials specifications, saving close to 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, and shaving almost 20% of its projected carbon footprint.

The high standards set rubbed off on the sponsors, too. The Games prompted Coca-Cola to rethink its storage space for easy stockpiling and swift deliveries – both to the venues and to other outlets it will continue to serve. In 2010, it signed a five-year lease for a 22,000 square metre warehouse in Dagenham. Nine miles from the Olympic Park, this features solar PV roof panels, an 80kWh ground source heat pump and a rainwater harvesting system collecting around 400,000 litres of water annually, which halves annual water use. Coca-Cola says the warehouse has helped to cut its carbon footprint for Games-related distribution by a third, as well as its utility bills. And it hopes its success will encourage similar investments by other companies.

Energy consumption isn’t the only source of carbon emissions, of course. Building and equipping the Olympic site could result in frightening levels of resource consumption, unless carefully managed. In an effort to do so, the Olympic Delivery Authority set out a Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS), back in January 2007, reflecting then current best practice in construction. It committed to using at least 20%

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recycled content by value in Games venues, and at least 25% recycled content by volume of aggregate used. As of December 2011, its performance had far exceeded these targets, standing at 34% and 42% respectively. This partly reflected advances in construction practice over those four years, but also the fact that striving to meet those targets had itself encouraged new approaches.

The same goes for the aim of minimising waste from all the work on the site. A total of 98.5% of the waste resulting from demolishing existing structures was either recovered, reused or recycled, with the figure for the construction phase rising to 99%. Both comfortably exceeded the 90% target. Processed concrete, reclaimed cobbles, bricks and sandstone paving all found new purposes through reuse or recycling. Broken roof tiles, for example, were put to use in creating habitats for invertebrates in the Park’s wildlife havens.

Key companies such as UPS, the logistics partner, and BT, which is delivering the communications network, deployed tag and track systems to reunite items with their original packaging. UPS said it expects to meet the ‘zero waste to landfill’ target. Niall Dunne, Chief Sustainability Officer at BT, expects that around 25 tonnes of cable drums, wooden pallets, cardboard and shrink wrap may be left over after the Games, but he confirms that a contract is in place for all of this to be recycled.

Efforts were also made to minimise the impact of fitting out the buildings once complete.

UPS is charged with achieving carbon-cutting efficiencies in delivering, and later removing, 30 million pieces of inventory, including one million pieces of sporting equipment, 250,000 pieces of luggage and 400 tonnes of broadcasting equipment.

One of its biggest challenges is the Athlete’s Village, effectively a temporary town of more than 16,000 athletes and team officials during the Olympics. Half a million items had to be delivered to the 2,818 apartments. Furniture and fittings arrived

Above: Chic in the slipstream, the Velodrome is 30% more efficient than regulations require Left: PV in the Park complements the on-site Energy Centre that provides low-carbon cooling, heating and power to the Athletes Village

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Packaging will be colour-coded to encourage recycling

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from the Far East to Tilbury Docks in 450 containers before being unloaded and taken to UPS’s nearby warehouse. Flat-pack furniture was assembled and loaded into demountable containers, halving the number of road journeys to the Village needed compared to the standard method of transportation in sea containers.

UPS also worked with the Carbon Neutral Company to measure, manage and mitigate its Games footprint. Unavoidable carbon emissions were balanced by purchasing gold-standard offsets from a Chinese scheme converting landfill gas to electricity. This not only generates power; it also captures methane – a highly potent greenhouse gas which could otherwise leak into the atmosphere.

The same approach towards unavoidable carbon emissions was taken by Coca-Cola, which also bought gold standard carbon offsets. These will go towards a series of projects in Brazil (host country for the Rio 2016 Games) in which biomass is used to replace fossil fuels in ceramics factories.

BT’s carbon impact is less visible, but far from negligible. The company is charged with delivering every image, every sports report, every one of an estimated one billion visits to the official London 2012 website, along with millions of phone calls, emails and texts sent and received during the Games. Influenced by LOCOG’s work, it has developed its own carbon footprinting methodology, calculating both emissions produced ‘in use’ and those ‘embodied’ in all the kit. It hopes this could

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raise standards across the industry.

So much for creating the Olympics site. Once in use, of course, it will generate a great deal of waste, not least from the tens of thousands of athletes, visitors and staff who descend on the Park. LOCOG has stipulated that at least 70% of this should be reused, recycled or composted, with nothing going directly to landfill. The organisers worked with CocaCola and resource specialists WRAP to develop a system to encourage recycling. Spectators will find 120-litre black waste bins sandwiched by a green 240-litre recycling bin and an orange 240-litre bin for compostable waste. Food and drink packaging will be colour-coded with green or orange flashes to reinforce the message.

For its part, Coca-Cola has also pledged to recycle every plastic bottle disposed of at the Olympic Park and return it to the shelves within six weeks. Continuum Recycling, a joint partnership between ECO Plastics and Coca-Cola Enterprises, made this ‘bottle-to-bottle’ promise feasible, by expanding an existing reprocessing factory in Lincolnshire, which reopened in May 2012.

Continuum Recycling also enabled Coca-Cola to guarantee that its bottles sold at venues, and across the UK by the end of 2012, will contain at least 25% recycled plastic (rPET).

“It’s a game changer”, said Katherine Symonds, Head of Sustainability for Coca-Cola’s Olympic team. “Two-thirds of all UK plastic waste was being shipped to Asia. Following the opening of Continuum Recycling, only one-third will be.” LOCOG also required all catering firms in the Olympic Park to use compostable and recycled food packaging, so cutting out the ‘unrecyclable’ food pack waste which is so often a blight of any major event.

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Photo: Continuum Recycling / The Coca-Cola Company

These small hold farmers in Kenya are paid for each living tree under the Meru and Nanyuki Community Reforestation Project, supported

by BP Target Neutral. One hectare of reforested land sequesters one tonne of CO2 over approximately 118 days. The farmers receive 70% of the revenue from the sale of carbon credits.

Photo: BP

Forest fix

Taken together, all these initiatives underline the fact that it is possible to stage a huge spectacular such as the Olympics without leaving a mountain of unrecoverable rubbish at the end of it.

All those spectators won’t arrive at the Park by magic, however. The organisers are encouraging people to travel by public transport or bicycle [see ‘Jam busting’, p10], with cars largely ‘designed out’ of the plans. Inevitably, though, many will make the first part of the journey by vehicle – and those coming from overseas will fly. And every journey that’s not on foot or cycle emits some carbon.

For some years now, BP has been encouraging drivers to reduce and offset their carbon via its Target Neutral programme, which invests in schemes to avoid or absorb CO2 emissions elsewhere in the world. For London2012, BP is offsetting all journeys to the Games for free to anyone who registers at www.bptargetneutral.com/london2012.

The low carbon development projects have been selected to reflect the global nature of the Olympics, with schemes on each of the continents participating in the Games. They include community reforestation on the slopes of Mount Meru and Mount Kenya in Africa, building cyclone-resistant wind farms for local power in New Caledonia in the Pacific, producing electricity from landfill gas in Turkey and biogas on Wisconsin dairy farms, using biomass to fuel the kilns in Brazilian ceramic factories, and turning rice and cotton waste into renewable electricity in rural China. Each project not only cuts carbon, but also creates jobs and economic opportunities for local people.

The schemes are all validated by ICROA – the International Carbon Reduction and Offsetting Alliance – and scrutinised by a panel including Care

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International and Forum for the Future. BP hopes that it will raise awareness about the carbon impact of travel and set a world record for the most people to offset travel emissions to a single event. But it’s not without its critics. “Offsetting is something you do after all your other work to reduce emissions”, according to Simon Lewis, WWF’s Olympics spokesperson. “This is a low-cost and fairly cynical bit of greenwashing.”

David Stubbs, Head of Sustainability at LOCOG, however, is adamant that the London 2012 offsetting scheme comes “at the end of a long list of measures to avoid and minimise emissions in the first place”.

Sally Uren, Deputy Chief Executive of Forum for the Future, comments: “Offsetting should only ever be part of the picture. But where unavoidable carbon emissions are concerned – and you cannot hope to travel any distance to the Olympics without incurring them – then it is an excellent way of ensuring that those emissions are reduced or avoided elsewhere.

And much, much better than doing nothing!”

After the Games is over comes the process of transforming the site into a permanent park and sports location. Attention has been given to minimising waste and energy output. The ‘pop-up’ venues for water polo and other sports are designed for easy disassembly and reuse, and substantial swathes of seating and other furniture have been hired, rather than bought, so ensuring further use.

Equipment installed by BT for the Games will provide another legacy, becoming part of the national infrastructure. This includes more than 19,000 copper pairs and 3,000 fibres (a single pair will support the needs of most businesses), which will be available to any communication services provider.

Waste will be further reduced, with furniture sold off, donated to schools or used again at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. To give two examples: forty fibre-glass concrete moulds from the Aquatic Centre are going to a nearby adventure playground, and surplus stationery is being sent to a children’s special needs centre in West Ham. Attention to detail in all aspects of the event has been key – even the volunteer Games Makers’ umbrellas are made of 100% recycled polyester.

However, the legacy review published by the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 (CSL) identifies one black mark in this area, stating that the commitment for the Games to be a catalyst for new waste infrastructure in East London will not be achieved. It’s also critical of the London Legacy Development Corporation’s target for 60% of residential waste at post-Games apartments to be recycled or home composted by 2020. Set against the more ambitious targets being drawn up for new housing elsewhere, this is seen as conservative.

Overall, though, most people acknowledge that an operation on this scale was never going to be footprint-free. In times to come, its environmental targets may well look unambitious. But if they do so, it might in part be because they have helped speed the adoption of better, more innovative practice.

A “One Planet Olympics” was always going to be a tall order in a country living a three-planet lifestyle. But, as the target was to move towards that ambition, then London 2012 may well pull it off. – Robin Yapp

Left: no bottling out of recycling as capacity grows

An operation on this scale was never going to be footprint-free

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Picnic in the park

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traceability and animal welfare. Similarly, all the eggs bear the British Lion Mark for free-range. Fairtrade bananas are guaranteed, and the same goes for tea, coffee and sugar. All chocolate products will be either Fairtrade-certified or ‘ethically sourced’ (though it’s not quite clear how the latter will be assured).

Mouth-watering – but what if you’ve splashed out on tickets and are keen to save your pennies?

LOCOG has been keen to keep the prices affordable for the consumer, as well as fair for the farmer.

According to the sample spectator menu, published

by LOCOG, your cheese sandwich will cost less than £4 and your jacket potato less than £6. There’s free drinking water at all venues, and you can even bring a small amount of your own food – although the organisers are concerned that waste packaging from outside may interfere with their carefully colour-coded recycling and composting streams…

All this is set out in the Food Vision, the first comprehensive strategy for sustainable catering at scale. Professor David Russell of The Russell Partnership, a strategic food consultancy, was involved from the outset.

“We realised that no one had ever written such a document, and so our first task was to get a handle

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Photo: The Coca-Cola Company

It’s a safe bet that London 2012 will see more calories consumed than burned. The Olympic Village alone will be stocked with 25,000 loaves of bread, 232 tonnes of potatoes, more than 100 tonnes of meat and 75,000 litres of milk – and then there are hundreds of tonnes of seafood, poultry, eggs, cheese, fruit and vegetables on top of that. Around 14 million meals will be served during the Games, enough to make the biblical miracle of feeding the 5,000 look like a picnic. Still more ambitious was the aim to make this huge event a shining example of sustainable catering.

So what could peckish players and spectators pick up in the Park? If you fancy a sandwich, you’ll find Red Leicester cheese with apple chutney – both British – on bread baked in Oxfordshire. Perhaps you’ll opt for jacket potato with Freedom Foods chicken, which means it’s indoor reared, free-range, organic and has been looked after to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s (RSPCA) strict welfare standards. For a bit of crunch, add Dingley Dell bacon, from pigs reared outdoors in Suffolk – or go the whole hog and have a roast: all meat served at the Games will bear the Red Tractor mark, a guarantee of strict standards of food safety,

Photo: Peter Macdiarmid / Getty

Will sustainable food be standard fare at major events in years to come? That’s the hope, says Rachel England.

on the scale of it. That’s when figures like 14 million meals began to loom…! This was in 2008, and so we had to ask ourselves what the main food trends would be in four years’ time. As soon as we did that, sustainability became fundamental. There was already a growing interest in where food came from and its nutritional value: people were going for fewer treats but higher quality.”

The next question was how to deliver it. David Russell and David Stubbs, Head of Sustainability at LOCOG, brought together a Food Advisory Group to integrate industry into the approach from the outset. It included key sponsors Coca-Cola and McDonalds, the National Farmers Union (NFU) to represent producers, professional bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the pressure group Sustain, government departments and the environmentalist Rosie Boycott – chairman of the London Food Board. “We were delighted to get a massive collection of specialists round a table to share their thoughts and vision early”, says Russell.

“It meant the NFU could tell farmers to prepare for Red Tractor standards and organic aspirations, for example, and brought Coca-Cola onside with the plan to provide free drinking water.”

They all recognised that the Games offered a unique opportunity: to transform catering at major events; to showcase British, sustainable and ethical food; and to push the boat out on responsible packaging and waste management. Consultations were carried out with each sector – dairy, meat, fruit and vegetables, and fish – to guarantee quality at reasonable prices.

For Kath Dalmeny, Policy Director of Sustain, “One of the really positive aspects of the Food Vision is its tangibility. You can make bold vision statements, but they’re pointless to a caterer. The caterer needs to know – specifically – what they need to do, and because the Vision tackles each food group

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individually, there can be no confusion about the basic requirements.”

The Vision promises to maximise the use of local, seasonal produce, in line with commitments to minimise the carbon footprint of the Games. It doesn’t mandate that products are organic, but asks suppliers to buy products certified by the LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) Marque, Rainforest Alliance and RSPCA Freedom Foods, “where available and affordable”. As Russell points out, the suppliers that met these ‘aspirational standards’ won more points in the procurement process – and those that upped their game can now use their ready supply of organic free-range eggs (for example) as a positive selling point.

“It has put the shoe on the other foot”, says Russell. “Before, standards organisations like Red Tractor and Freedom Foods were going to caterers saying, ‘Listen to us!’. Now, caterers are going to them.”

One area of particular focus was sustainable fish. Those involved in the Vision “wanted to get [this] 100% right” – partly because of the publicity surrounding Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ‘Fish Fight’ campaign. As such, all wild-caught fish served will meet the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, which includes Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)certification.

“We’re really pleased that MSC-certified fish is being served at the Olympics this summer”, says Toby Middleton, UK Country Manager, MSC. “It’s great news for the millions of sports fans who will be travelling to the venues and looking for a classic, traditional British meal between events. Around 8.8 million ticket holders throughout the Games will be offered MSC certified sustainable fish and chips as part of their Olympic experience. That’s great news for fans and great news for the oceans.”

Behaviour change in a bin

The Games offered an opportunity to transform catering at major events

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habitats available for wildlife, actively curb pollution and use water more efficiently. Some LEAF Marque produce will be used during the Games, namely potatoes in the Olympic Park South and within the Media Centre.

Stubbs is keen to point out that there are other sustainability factors that must be taken into account when catering for a major one-off event – alongside the environmental criteria. “Our food has to balance affordability and the practicalities of delivering such a complex, large operation for a temporary period. It has to be socially sustainable and affordable, as well as green.”

Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation, welcomes the emphasis on Fairtrade products in Games menus. “Fairtrade is all about creating a level playing field for smallholders and workers in global trade”, she says. “By asking the catering industry to source Fairtrade-certified products, LOCOG has set new standards for the catering industry for not just this iconic event but future major events – quite a legacy.”

The sponsors, including Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, have played a big role in taking the sustainability aspirations to scale. Coca-Cola has shown that involving global brands doesn’t

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Photo: omgimages / Thinkstock

Slow-rearing makes for a longer life and more succulent meat

For Dalmeny, the Vision’s firm stance on fish is indicative of the Food Vision’s overall strength. This vital move has brought London closer to becoming a Sustainable Fish City, she says, with major organisations signing a pledge to buy sustainable seafood, protecting precious marine environments, fish stocks and livelihoods. Russell agrees: “You now have central Government buying into sustainable fish, from Number 10 to prisons and the armed forces. That’s 400,000 meals a year. And some major caterers including Sodexo have come in: that’s another 60 million meals a year…”

It’s proof that sustainable catering doesn’t have to be niche. “At first, lots of people were sceptical about what could be achieved in terms of sustainable food”, Dalmeny explains. “There was some resistance to attempting sustainable catering on this level simply because it hadn’t been tried before.

But it’s now widely accepted that LOCOG will deliver on its food promises, and people are, I think, pleasantly surprised.”

That’s not to say that everything served will be ‘deep green’. Sustain would have liked to have seen tougher minimum standards, like the LEAF Marque, for which farmers must go beyond legal minimum requirements to reduce the use of chemicals, make

Photo: Dingley Dell Pork

On the menu: free-range pork

necessarily mean global imports: 95% of all products it will sell at London 2012 will be manufactured at one of its six sites across the UK. The fast food giant McDonald’s, which is responsible for an estimated 10% of the food supplied at the Games, will be using only organic milk, and has helped LOCOG to source organic milk for its entire spectator catering. For LOCOG, the hope is that the Vision’s ambitions will rub off on the sponsors in the long term. McDonald’s already uses free-range eggs in restaurants across the UK and Europe, and will be sourcing all chicken for the Games from the UK, having initially considered Brazil.

One challenge for the organisers has been the trade-off between the vast scale of this catering project and the aspiration to use smaller, local and regional suppliers. But they saw it as an opportunity to join up the dots between big caterers and SMEs, running a food showcase to give small producers the chance to show their product to big caterers.

In addition, explains Russell, “We insisted that if a caterer won a tender to produce a specialist food, a Latin American dish for example, that it would work with an SME with the required skills.”

Unfortunately, the success stories of local suppliers and small catering companies have struggled to hit the headlines, due in part to the legal right of the official partners to associate their work with the Games. While brand exclusivity is an essential part of sponsorship, Dalmeny is concerned that the opportunity to encourage good practice by drawing on the work of smaller suppliers isn’t missed.

Red Tractor took on the challenge with Team RT, an educational project which takes farmers into schools to tell children how their food is produced, how quality is assured, and how it travels from the farm to the world stage at the Games. Among the farmers are Alistair and Stuart Butler, from Blythburgh Farm in Suffolk, whose pork is independently audited by vets and the RSPCA in order to gain both the Red Tractor mark and the Freedom Foods mark. They explain that the extra space they give their free-range pigs means they burn off more calories, and so grow at a slower rate than those confined in pens.

This slow-rearing, they claim, makes for a longer, happier life and more succulent meat. Their pork is stamped with an exclusive holding number to make it traceable from the farm through to the butcher’s counter.

Healthy pigs are one consideration; healthy spectators another. If you’re catering for an event celebrating fitness and strength, you can’t ignore the nutritional quality of the food. Significant sponsorship from McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Cadbury prompted some to dub it the ‘junk food Olympics’ – but is this a fair assessment? ‘Choice and balance’ is one of five main themes in the Food Vision, with the commitment to ensure there is a diverse range of food and beverage for all customers, catering for all dietary and cultural requirements – from vegetarian or gluten-free diets to halal or kosher food – and ensuring it is all high quality, value for money and accessible. Katherine Symonds, Head of Sustainability at Coca-Cola, points out that London 2012 will have the widest range of drinks ever provided at an Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Coca-Cola offered only one product in one size at the

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1948 Games, compared to 19 this time round.

The company expects that 75% of the drinks it will sell at London 2012 will be low or no-calorie products, such as water, juice or smoothies.

Symonds also notes that all of Coca-Cola’s carbonated soft drinks, plus Powerade and Glaceau Vitaminwater, will carry Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) information, to enable visitors to make informed decisions about what they drink – and, she says, its branding in venues will reflect the range of drinks on offer.

But once all the spectators have gone home, what will be left? Arguably the most important legacy is that the standards set out in Food Vision have now been adopted by major consultants who write over 90% of event tenders, including The Foodservice Consultants Society International. “Historically, sustainability specifications weren’t important or included”, says Russell. “This puts sustainability on the front foot: it’s no longer just a happy add-on.”

Others will carry on the work the Food Advisory Group began, but the Group itself will also carry on.

The organisations have come together in a new, independent Food Legacy programme, facilitated

by Sustain. Its aim is to help more caterers and food suppliers achieve the ambitions of the London 2012 Food Vision, by offering practical assistance, information and inspiring educational projects – such as trips to help big buyers visit local farms.

When the London 2012 Bid Team sat down in 2004 and began penning its Olympic vision it did so with a blank slate, and incorporating sustainable food into its plans was a pioneering move. “That’s to be celebrated”, says Dalmeny. “Sure, there is some room for improvement – you won’t get something like this perfect the first time around, but the vital thing is that there now exists a solid foundation – and legacy – to build upon. Without having to reinvent the wheel, future events can now, hopefully, raise the sustainability bar higher every time.”

Rachel England is a freelance writer and editor specialising in sustainability.

McDonald’s helped LOCOG source organic milk for its entire spectator catering

Fish and chips with a tick from sustainable seafood groups

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Transformers

London 2012 promised to be a regenerative force for a long neglected part of the capital. Phil Harper asks whether this promise has been fulfilled – and what are the lessons learned.

Birds eye view: a single vision for a sizeable space

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Photo: LOCOG

and management, and to plan and operate it through a single lens, means you can do things at scale in a coordinated and strategic way”, said David Stubbs, Head of Sustainability at LOCOG. “Most regeneration projects just don’t have that strategic focus.”

The first task was to transform the site from a mixture of industrial wasteland and urban jungle into a world-class sporting venue-cum-ecological park [see ‘Restoration drama’, p4]. The cleared land made way for the Olympic Village, home to more than 16,000 athletes during the Games. When the Games finish in September 2012, the London Legacy Development Corporation will begin a retrofit, giving every apartment a kitchen. The Village has already met Level 4 of the Government’s Code for Sustainable Homes – making it good, if not best, practice in terms of environmental performance.

Half the Village will end up as affordable housing, on a shared ownership or social letting basis, and will be managed by Triathlon Homes, a joint venture company established by First Base, East Thames Group, and Southern Housing Group. The other half has been sold on the open market to a consortium consisting of UK developer Delancey and the Qatari Diar group, which also secured six adjacent future development plots with the potential for 2,000 more homes.

Photo: Handout / Getty

It will form one of the largest urban parks created in Europe in the last 150 years

“The true legacy of 2012 is that within 20 years the communities who host the Games will have the same social and economic chances as their neighbours across London.”

This rather dry phrase, published in London 2012’s Strategic Regeneration Framework, conceals a considerable ambition. The Olympics site sits at the heart of four boroughs which are among the most deprived in England. And yet it lies right next to some of the most prosperous areas of the country.

Despite being so geographically close, there is a huge gap in health, life expectancy, educational achievement and crime.

Previous efforts at regeneration have been patchy at best. But the announcement in 2005 that London had won the Games brought a much needed sense of urgency, and most crucially, a looming deadline to get things done. A major barrier to previous regeneration schemes had been 52 electricity pylons and hundreds of miles of unsightly cables located throughout the site. The scale of investment and engineering required to relocate them underground was beyond the scope of previous regeneration attempts. Yet, at the announcement of London 2012, they were one of the first things to be tackled.

“To have brought together an area as large as Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens under one ownership

There’s no denying the scale and pace of change happening in East London. The 2012 deadline meant that work went ahead at what Mayor Boris Johnson called “a sensational speed”. But this had its disadvantages, says urban ecologist Joe Ravetz. “In the rush to get everything done, they’ve had to use many non-local contractors, displace small businesses, and concrete over much loved local green space.”

In response, Stubbs points to LOCOG’s open and transparent procurement processes, and asserts that it has worked with many small and local businesses to generate employment opportunities around the Games. He adds that the Olympic Park site was “massively in need of regeneration”, and that its work “has created new opportunities in terms of jobs, skills development, and accessible green space and wildlife”.

The loss of the Manor Gardens allotments became a rallying cry for opponents. Local MP Diane Abbot had a more nuanced view. “It is a real shame that the allotments had to be lost … However I also feel that the benefits that the Olympics will bring to Hackney as a whole are enormous, and do outweigh those of other facilities in the area.”

So, what of those benefits? The Legacy Corporation will manage the project when the Games finishes, and has an extensive plan to bring investment into the area. Already, residents are benefiting from more than 120 walkways and cycle routes, making it easier to get around sustainably. When complete, the whole area will form one of the largest urban parks created in Europe in the last 150 years, and future plans suggest other parts of the site will have 11,000 affordable new family homes. The area will also be one of the UK’s hotspots for communications, with a highspeed, high-capacity network installed by BT to bring the Games to spectators across the world.

Just a short walk from the park, East London residents now have access to the £1.45 billion Westfield Stratford City development, expected to bring in more than one million visitors a week. The idea that retail-led regeneration projects can promote sustainability is a matter of debate. The goods are rarely produced locally, and rental costs are often beyond the reach of local businesses. In a similar regeneration at Manchester’s Arndale Centre, low-rent space was provided for market traders, but no such provision was made at Westfield.

Unsurprisingly, the area’s market traders have mixed feelings. Neil Stockwell, a stallholder on the Green Street market in Newham said: “I love sport, I love the Olympics, and I’m proud that we got to host it. But we were told that the Olympics would benefit local people. The only people who seem to be benefiting are those with the big franchises.” It’s a view echoed by Glenn Pierman, who has run a stall selling CDs at Stratford’s outdoor market for more than 18 years. “It’s exciting times ahead, but as for the business I just don’t know. The buses now go to Westfield and we’re missing the flow of people that we were used to.” But he added, “With the Olympics it’s a numbers game, [and] the more people pass you, the more chance you’ve got.”

Others may draw optimism from figures showing how many new ventures have opened in the area.

While the number of businesses operating in London as a whole has fallen slightly in recent years, Newham

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has bucked the trend, with the total soaring by 43.3%, from 10,238 in 2010 to 14,672 at the beginning of 2012.

So while the benefits may not reach everyone locally, there’s little doubt that, as a whole, the Olympics has succeeded where other regeneration projects for the area failed. The key lesson which seems to emerge is the importance of extensive planning. “They started planning for the legacy of the Games years earlier than other host cities”, said Joe Montgomery, Chief Executive of the Urban Land Institute Europe. “This is novel, and London’s approach could emerge as a model for future host cities.”

The model was to develop the legacy plans first, then connect the Games to them. It may seem obvious, but long term use wasn’t something developers at the 2004 Games in Athens paid any attention to. Many of the Athens venues now sit behind barbed wire fences, monuments to poor planning. Conversely, legacy uses have been identified for all the permanent venues on the London site. The Legacy Corporation will invite operators to find a regular use for the Olympic Stadium. If future users don’t need the upper half of the stadium, it can be stripped down to its core components and resold on the open market – a remarkable and unique engineering achievement. The remaining, much smaller venue will be cheaper to run and might offer a better match for smaller investors. Such flexibility is seen as key to intelligent legacy planning.

Meanwhile, all the lessons learned throughout the development are to be freely shared on a dedicated website – and the information is already beginning to snowball, with tips on everything from how to get rid of Japanese Knotweed [an invasive plant that is notoriously hard to eradicate], to contending with the more niche problem of discovering a submerged ancient boat.

As the Strategic Regeneration Framework acknowledged, it could be 20 years before we can see the full impact of the Olympics in terms of its legacy for the local community. The regeneration is nowhere near the finishing line yet, but with investment pouring in to the area, it has certainly got off to a good start.

After the athletes: affordable housing and a communications hotspot

The upper half of the stadium can be stripped down and resold on the open market

Phil Harper is a freelance writer specialising in green issues.

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Smells like team spirit

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their talents for their peers, parents, and friends.”

The show included primary school children doing Bollywood dances, Newham Council workers singing Adele songs, rappers, drummers, pop acts, Polish singers and rumba dancers. And there should be more to come. “I invited a councillor from Newham who really liked the concept”, says Hally. “She’s asked me to help her do more shows in the future, so this is going to be a long-term thing.”

Giving young people a platform where they can express themselves without feeling patronised can be a powerful incentive for them to act. One such platform is Big Voice: a national film competition for 11-19 year-olds from all over the UK, mounted

by BT as part of London 2012’s Get Set education scheme. It brought together school children with college students and professional producers, and the 36 finalists included films on everything from beating bullying and homophobia to caring for the local environment and, in one case, how boys should take responsibility for teenage pregnancy.

Morpeth School in Bethnal Green used images of young athletes free-running through the backstreets of London, leaping from rooftops to walls, to give an edge to their request to keep the city, their own track, free of litter. They managed their own production budget and schedule, says Head Teacher Hugh Flannery: “They benefited from the whole process: decision-making, listening, prioritising, and skills for camera work. They now feel totally empowered knowing their small seed has grown into this.”

Moreover, Flannery adds, the project has inspired these students to be involved in Keep Britain, clearing waterways and picking up litter. After being shown at big screen events from Aberdeen to Woolwich, three films will be chosen by the judging panel for gold, silver and bronze medals, with a ‘People’s Choice’ winner voted for via BT’s Big Voice website.

As well as indirectly inspiring young people to care about their local environment, there have been projects that help them get out and enhance it. Transform is bringing together volunteers to turn 45 areas of derelict land in the Olympics host boroughs into fantastic new green spaces, and in the process they hope to encourage people to live more

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Photo: Gideon Mendel / Corbis; BT

Future directors at work on BT’s national film competition, Big Voice

Britain’s national sense of community was put on trial in the summer of 2011, when images of rioters were broadcast around the world.

The Games will show London in a very different light: a city celebrating the rich rewards of people coming together to strive in teams. Can it also help tackle the fact that large swathes of society, particularly the urban young, feel abandoned by the mainstream?

Long before the riots reared their head, London won the Olympic bid partly on the back of a promise to make things better for marginalised youth. The London 2012 Young Leaders Programme sets out to improve the leadership skills of youth right across the country. To date, 100 young people have organised community projects on everything from constructing low rope courses in Aberdeen and developing high street art projects in Surrey to landscaping roundabouts in Berkshire. The programme is backed

by BP, The Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Foundation, and vInspired, along with LOCOG. Young Leader Hally Nguyen – who was 16 when the project started two years ago – worked with the Newham team to put on a variety show one December night in East Ham’s Trinity Centre. “There are lots of talented people in Newham”, says Hally, “and I wanted to give them a chance to showcase

Photo: Big Voice / BT

The Olympic and Paralympic Games is all about great team work – but can London 2012 inspire collective action towards healthier, more cohesive communities?

sustainably. Supported by a grant from DEFRA and waste company SITA, the project is a collaboration between Groundwork and The London Sustainability Exchange, and a key feature is the way local people decide on what – and how – to transform in their surroundings. “We didn’t want it to be a process whereby the local councils identified the sites to be changed, we wanted it to be community led”, said Ben Coles, Director of Communities and Local Partnerships at Groundwork. “All of the projects are bottom-up, with people coming out to have their say.

In doing so they’re building relationships, and the net result is a more cohesive and vibrant community.”

One such project was the creation of new allotments at Woodberry Down in the north of Hackney – making up for the loss of the Manor Gardens site. The hard graft of clearing an overgrown space was finished thanks to the efforts of more than 140 volunteers, and now over 85 varieties of fruits and vegetables are growing there. “It has transformed my life”, said Geraldine Forbes, who now has her own plot after helping to clear Woodberry Down. “Our community has changed dramatically. I can now say ‘hello’ to the people I’ve been living so close to, but had never seen or interacted with. I have made so many new friends. The children love it here.”

Transform is just one part of LOCOG’s Changing Places programme, which has been running since 2009. It has worked with nearly 12,000 local people who volunteer their time to make their local area that bit nicer, cleaner and more welcoming. Together, they have planted over 4,000 trees, cleared thousands of square metres of graffiti, and removed tonnes of rubbish from parks, rivers and canals across the city. It’s all part of an effort to “use the Games to get local people involved, so they can see environmental benefits long into the future”, says Matthew Watts, Changing Places Programme Manager.

The Olympic and Paralympic Games is, of course, primarily about sport. So, the charity StreetGames, which brings a range of sports onto the doorstep of disadvantaged communities, has been using the occasion to get young people enthused in getting active and keeping fit. With support from Sport England and Coca-Cola, StreetGames has been rolling out its Training Academy Coaching Course, to help create a ‘doorstep workforce’ to provide well-organised sporting opportunities for local people.

“Learning how to coach and get a qualification was brilliant”, said one participant, Leon McCollin, from Cricklewood in north-west London. “I have my coaching badges for football, and I’m trying to get them for cricket, too. This is a very diverse area, and the project has definitely brought about better communication between … kids from different backgrounds. Football is something fun that everyone enjoys, and so it’s really helped to break those barriers down and bring people together.”

StreetGames is also keen to use sport as a springboard to help young people gain skills that will help them to bring valuable resources into their communities in the future. It has teamed up with Coca-Cola to offer 45 of its inspirational young participants, aged between 18 and 21, a paid work experience opportunity inside the Olympic Park.

Logistics company and Games sponsor UPS has also made efforts to give employment opportunities

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to local communities. It worked with the non-profit BeOnsite to give 50 unemployed people some new skills for their CVs – from basic carpentry to safety training and team leadership. It also asked its employees to recommend friends and family for temporary jobs (a common approach in some parts of the world, although contrary to open recruitment).

“Everyone wants to share something great with family and friends”, explains Cindy Miller, UPS Managing Director UK, Ireland & Nordics. “People will say, ‘My neighbour is a driver at UPS, so I’ve been offered this opportunity to set up the stage, or hand athletes their kit.’” A warming thought, but what’s in it for UPS? “We’re a big global brand”, says Miller, “but we’re also the village or town workers that shift business from place to place. The stronger a community, the more need there is for UPS to move information, products and funds back and forth. For us, communities are a basic building block. When businesses thrive in communities, everyone benefits.”

Short-term opportunities offer a welcome boost, but if there’s one thing that needs slow and steady nurture, it’s the sense of shared goals that binds people together. There’s little we can achieve alone, and so community resilience is vital to a sustainable future [see the Green Futures Special Edition, ‘Shared Future’]. The Games offers communities a chance to come together on the world’s stage. The challenge is finding the resources to sustain this ‘Olympic effect’ once the buzz fades away. – Phil Harper

Above: Setting the scene for new talent Below: Olympic diver and BT ambassador Leon Taylor engages with school children in East London, using the BT Coaching for Life mobile app

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Pep talk How will London 2012 flex the next generation for the future? Charlotte Sankey investigates.

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Green Futures July 2012

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Photos: StreetGames / The Coca-Cola Company; Brian Griffin / BT Road to 2012

Openreach, as part of the official London 2012 education programme for UK schools and colleges.

This ‘triathlon’ aims to train primary school children in the three ‘T’s – thinking, talking and teamwork.

Activities include Secret Striker, a game based on blink murder to encourage eye contact during conversation, and Sports Bingo, to develop listening and categorisation skills.

The young boy at Northgate Primary is testament to the project’s success. “[I’m unpopular] because I don’t listen to the others”, he says, offering a scorchingly intimate breakthrough for the record. “I’ve realised I ‘bulldoze’ them when I’m talking to them.” If only you could bottle that kind of insight and hand it out on the street…

Parents are on side too, with lists of interesting facts to keep the conversation flowing at home. (‘Guess how many football pitches you could squeeze into the Olympic Park? 180? No, higher… Higher, again… Yes, really, I’m not joking! As many as 357…’)

The need for some magic in a bottle is pretty pressing. According to I CAN, one child in 10 in the UK has communication difficulties that require specialist help. And for Sir Mike Rake, Chairman of BT as well as of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, this is a time-bomb of a problem.

Photos: xxxxx

Dance: demonstrating the power of sport and culture

“Dear Mr Sullivan, I now know why I’m unpopular at school. I can make some friends now, thanks.”

It’s not your typical thank you letter, but it’s a deal more touching than most. It was written by a young boy at Northgate Primary School, Sussex, after Keith Sullivan ran a workshop on what makes for good communications – and what doesn’t. He took on the task of demystifying the skills that social butterflies take for granted: how to listen, how to know when to move from one idea to the next, how to keep people engaged, how to keep them on side.

Sullivan works for Openreach, the company that lays down the wires, cables and fibres for telecommunications group BT and other UK operators. BT is responsible for the communications services for the Games, which means connecting 94 locations – from London to Cardiff to Glasgow – for the pleasure of spectators in over 200 countries.

That may sound like challenge enough, but the management is also keeping an eye on who’ll be using these channels in years to come.

Which explains what Sullivan was doing in the primary school. His workshop was part of the Communications Triathlon, a project by children’s communications charity I CAN in collaboration with

“Communication skills are the most important employability skills”, he says. “A lack of them in a candidate is a deal breaker for many employers.”

Tim Palmer, Head at St Osyth’s, Essex – one of 1,500 primary schools that took part – agrees. “Forget the educational aspect of this project”, he says. “Put simply, communication is fundamental to everything we are all doing. It’s life. We are trying to help the young to have better lives, and I’ve seen the power such projects can have. The Olympics offers a great excuse to boost work we are already doing.”

Skilling up the next generation is one thing; inspiring them is another. Given that the strapline for the Games is ‘Inspire a generation’, the Cultural Olympiad was a cornerstone of London’s bid, and one of the reasons for its success. It’s the largest cultural celebration in the history of the modern Olympic and Paralympic Movements, according to LOCOG, and its sponsors include BP, BT, the Olympic Lottery Distributor, the Arts Council and Legacy Trust UK – an independent charity set up to create a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the London 2012 Games.

This enormous undertaking has seen 16 million people, many of them under the age of 18, take part in over 12,000 activities – from dance to film to art to poetry – since 2008. That’s enough creative juice to rival the flow of lactic acid…

The Tate Movie Project was one of the biggest activities, producing ‘The Itch of the Golden Nit’: an animated film in which 34,000 children worked on everything from the drawings to the story board to the soundtrack, in collaboration with Aardman, the creators of ‘Wallace and Gromit’. It was no low-budget endeavour, with £4 million in funding from Legacy Trust UK and BP. Another initiative by the National Portrait Gallery and BT, Road to 2012, saw free outdoor photography exhibitions in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Birmingham.

Photographers of international renown, including Bettina von Zwehl, Emma Hardy and Brian Griffin, captured the journey towards the Games of world-class athletes, those working behind the scenes, and people living in the host boroughs.

Other projects saw young people reciting love poetry in tents, painting athlete portraits as part of BP Portrait Award: Next Generation, and making short films for BT’s Big Voice [see ‘Smells like team spirit’, p28] and Panasonic’s Film Nation: Shorts.

But what – you may ask – do all these arts and communications activities have to do with a sports tournament? Does the run-up to the Oscars involve football matches or rowing regattas? You wouldn’t be alone. A straw poll in The Guardian and a more comprehensive one for IPSOS MORI show that between 50% and 73% of people don’t ‘get’ the Cultural Olympiad, despite its huge scale.

I put the question to David Stubbs, Head of Sustainability for LOCOG. “It all goes back to the original philosophy of the Olympics”, he explains.

“Particularly to Pierre de Coubertin who created the modern concept of the Games in the 1890s.”

Coubertin’s vision was of artists and sportspeople side by side, for the betterment of the whole person, not just their muscles. Leonardo da Vinci, and other polymaths, would have approved.

Another message the Cultural Olympiad is trying to get out there is that real success goes beyond individual

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achievement. The competing athletes take the crowd along with them: whether it’s their neighbours watching on the telly, or national cheerleaders who’ve made the trip to London, or a child whose eyes are tied to the graceful somersaults of a diver. We’re all represented somehow, and with each new record the potential of the whole human race is enhanced.

Which is why Stubbs is particularly proud of the projects that use the Olympic and Paralympic Games as a springboard to train up the next generation of leaders. Dan Goss, a 17-year-old from Waltham Forest, is one of 100 teenagers selected to be on the London 2012 Young Leaders Programme, supported by BP, The National Young Volunteers Service and The Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust.

Dan’s project was to organise a cycle ride for local teenagers through Epping Forest. He’d never done such a thing before, and was disappointed by the turn-out. But, he says, “We’ve learned how we could have marketed the bike ride better, not relying just on Facebook. Our aim was to make local people appreciate the forest on their doorstep, which young people tend to take for granted.

But the main thing the other leaders in Waltham Forest and I gained is a massive appreciation for people who organise events. I now understand much better the time it takes, the preparation required, and how much energy you need! This experience will help me so much in the future.”

“I don’t like the term ‘leader’ though”, adds Dan. “I’m a leader, but I don’t know everything. Leadership’s just about being able to listen and communicate and delegate and do your best.”

Who said young people these days are too full of themselves?

Charlotte Sankey runs Creative Warehouse, a communications agency specialising in environmental issues, arts and education.

Skilling up the next generation is one thing; inspiring them is another

BT Road to 2012: Brian Griffin’s portrait of English athlete Lisa Dobriskey with her father in the Olympic Park

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Beyond the Finish is a Green Futures Special Edition, produced in association with Coca-Cola, BP, BT, UPS and BMW.

Printed by Pureprint, using their environmental technology and vegetable-based inks, on 100% recycled and FSC certified Cocoon Silk paper, supplied by Arjowiggins Graphic.

Published July 2012. © Green Futures Reg charity no. 1040519 Company no. 2959712 VAT reg. no. 677 7475 70 The Coca-Cola Company has been continuously associated with the Olympic Games since 1928 – longer than any other corporate sponsor of the Olympic Movement. The Coca-Cola Company is the exclusive non-alcoholic beverage provider to the Olympic Games through 2020, and its products will refresh athletes, volunteers, officials and spectators throughout London 2012.

As the first ever Official Carbon Offset Partner of a summer Games, BP Target Neutral is playing an important part in helping London 2012 deliver the

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most sustainable Games possible. As the Official Oil and Gas Partner, BP is fuelling the official vehicle fleet of over 5,000 vehicles with the most advanced fuels and lubricants, and trialling three new biofuel blends not yet commercially available in the UK. BT is the official communications services partner of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. BT has pioneered the first ever converged communications network solution for a summer Games. It is an active supporter of Get Set, the official London 2012 education programme, which aims to help young people develop their communication and collaboration skills.

As the Official Logistics and Express Delivery Supporter of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, UPS is introducing a number of sustainable measures to the UK, including electric vehicles, deliveries by bicycle and on foot, telematics technology, a meticulous waste management programme, and a commitment to measure, manage and mitigate all carbon emissions associated with deliveries for the Games.

As the Official Automotive Partner to London 2012 and leader of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for seven consecutive years as the world’s most sustainable automotive manufacturer,

BMW will be providing low-emission diesel, hybrid and electric cars, as well as motorcycles and bicycles to support the running of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. BMW’s fleet will achieve 116g/km CO2, beating LOCOG’s challenging 120g/km CO2 emissions target.

Green Futures is the leading international magazine on environmental solutions and sustainable futures.

Founded by Jonathon Porritt, it is published by Forum for the Future, a non-profit organisation working globally with business and government to create a sustainable future. www.greenfutures.org.uk www.forumforthefuture.org

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