By any measure, Vancouver has raised the bar. “Vancouver and London [host of the 2012 Summer Games] are the first to take on this triple bottom-line sustainability platform,” says Duffy. Some examples: at the Whistler Sliding Centre, waste heat from the ice refrigeration plant heats nearby buildings. It, and all Whistler sites, were planned to limit vegetation clearing and to chip, compost and reuse, on-site, all wood waste. The Whistler Olympic Park, which was redesigned to reduce its footprint by 30 per cent, will leave a legacy of 50 km of cross-country ski trails.
In Vancouver, a gravel parking lot became the Olympic curling centre, which will morph into a combination curling club, hockey rink, library and gymnasium, all heated by waste warmth from the ice-making equipment and an adjoining swimming pool. Duffy says building to such environmental standards adds two to seven per cent to the cost, an investment that can be regained in as little as five years. “It’s obviously a lot more efficient and cost-effective to operate.”
The speed skating oval presented the greatest challenge. What to do with a building large enough to house four jumbo jets, once the athletes are gone? When officials in suburban Richmond considered whether to bid to build and manage the facility, they first toured some of the existing rinks. “The main question they asked was, ‘If you could do anything differently what would it be?’ ” says Aran Kay, communications coordinator for the oval. “The almost unanimous answer was that they would have planned for post-Games more thoroughly.” As a result, Richmond designed a building that will, realistically, see little use as a long-track oval once the Games are done. There is already a world-class facility in Calgary. Instead, it is built to meet Richmond’s less esoteric sporting needs: eight full-sized basketball or volleyball courts, two Olympic-sized skating rinks, a 23,000-sq.-foot fitness centre, a 200-m running track, a gymnastics floor and a 5,000-seat outdoor amphitheatre. “The public is demanding that there be more sustainable building practices, and this is a really good example,” says Kay.
Still, there is no getting around the fact that the Olympics are a big, messy business. The David Suzuki Foundation, at VANOC’s request, has calculated the Games’ direct and indirect carbon footprint at 328,000 tonnes, equivalent to the annual output of some 65,600 cars. Almost 70 per cent of that is the result of the massive airlift required to get all the players to Vancouver. Some 70 Olympic and national team athletes have called on VANOC to make the Games totally carbon neutral. The Suzuki foundation estimates that would cost VANOC, or more likely a sponsor, about $5 million to purchase so-called carbon offsets, investments in things like wind, solar or biomass energy projects, often in developing countries. VANOC has committed to taking “responsibility” to offset the estimated 110,000 tonnes of emissions under its direct control, things like the Games operation, venue construction and travel by the Olympic family. How that plan will work and who will pay remains to be seen.
Duffy says the Games will leave a showcase of environmentally sound practices, from biodegradable dinnerware at the venues to those curious toilets. In this, she gets qualified support from Kathryn Molloy, the retired executive director of the Sierra Club of B.C., and a member of VANOC’s advisory board on sustainability. The Games’ ability to be a catalyst for change, she says, “probably outweighs the negatives.” Still, Molloy’s bottom line, which VANOC dutifully reports on its website, is this: “The most sustainable Olympics would be no Olympics.” Hosting the lumbering giant grows ever more complicated. To the IOC’s official three priorities, sport, culture, and environment, a fourth dimension has arrived, unbidden: guilt.
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