Sustainable London Olympics

Every four years the world comes together at the Olympic Games. It is a time to put politics aside and celebrate the achievements of our athletes. It is always a high profile event for the host country and showcase seen by television audiences around the world. Can the London Olympics also be a showcase of sustainability? The organisers hope so.

A lot of resources are required to hold an event as big as the Olympic Games. New venues are built, an athlete’s village is constructed and the athletes, officials and spectators fly in from every corner of the planet. By cancelling the Olympics a lot of CO2 could be saved, thousands of tons of concrete would not need to be poured, hundreds of flights could be cancelled and millions of televisions not watched for quite so long. This is, of course, a ridiculous viewpoint.

The Olympics are the pinnacle of human endeavour and comradeship as athletes compete according to the Olympic ideal that the competition is between teams and athletes not between countries. The resources used to stage an Olympics could hardly be used for a better purpose. Even so, to reduce the environmental impact of the games would be an important symbol that the world intends to get serious about adopting sustainability as the foundation of policy.

On television screens it would be good to see athletes compete with green architecture as a backdrop, travelling around on low-carbon transport systems and demonstrating how sustainable cities are possible.

The London 2012 Games bid included the vision to be ‘the first sustainable Olympic and Paralympic Games.’ The sustainability plan, Towards a one planet 2012, spells out how the vision will be delivered. I hope that the organisers can deliver on their promise and put London centre stage of sport and of sustainability policy.