BioRegional One Planet Sport Part 1 Beyond London 2012 ONE PLANET SPORT Part 1: Beyond London 2012 Supported by: 1 Introduction The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Some of very positive sustainability outcomes from are seen as one of Great Britain’s greatest success the Games so far have been the resources produced stories of this century so far. Key ingredients to support sustainability learning and practice, these were the sporting success of the home team, the include the following: spectacular opening and closing ceremonies and the delivery of gigantic and striking venues set in a • The launch of the Learning Legacy website, magnificent new urban park reclaimed from partial which contains a wealth of detailed lessons, dereliction. And, not least, the welcoming, inspiring written by practitioners working to deliver atmosphere that endured throughout Games time. the Games. These Games demonstrated that a mega event • The Commission for Sustainable London can support real progress towards sustainable 2012 has produced excellent annual reports development and act as an inspiring exemplar. providing independent monitoring on progress Despite some challenges and shortfalls, there was a against sustainability. serious and continuous commitment to sustainability • The ISO 20121:2012 Event sustainability from the time London put together its bid almost a management system2 and the Event decade ago through to the Games themselves in the Organisers Sector Supplement (EOSS)3 summer of 2012 and, thus far, their on-going legacy. provide a useful management process and list of KPIs respectively. “Sustainability needs to be built- • Having been a part of the London 2012 in and embedded rather than a journey, from bid to legacy, we want to label on the outside, and this is one share our experience and learning to ensure of the successes... London 2012 future games and mega events can raise the sustainability bar further still and benefit from achieved.” what proved to be an exhausting and yet hugely rewarding journey. Sue Riddlestone OBE, CEO and Co-Founder BioRegional This document forms one of three resources that we The innovation and technical solutions that have designed to support a sustainable legacy for developed have provided practical demonstrators sporting activities and events. Here we present our of how a commitment to sustainability can drive reflections on the key ingredients needed to ensure improvements in performance and reduce costs, a genuinely sustainable sporting event. These are whilst adding value and protecting against risks. predominantly drawn from the successes achieved, but other points come from the more neglected or incomplete ambitions that we feel need to be better “Sustainable procurement helps addressed in future. ensure value for money and lower To accompany this we have produced two useful operational costs whilst protecting resources to help the sports industry build on the the environment and bringing us progress of London 2012 to start their own ‘One wider societal benefits.” Planet’ journeys: Lord de Mauley, (then) Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Resource Management, Local Environment and Environmental Science (Defra)1 Front cover: The Olympic Stadium, photo taken by Duncan Rawlinson 2 One Planet Sport One Planet Sport Part 2: The athlete’s role Part 3: Vision for a sustainable future BioRegional carried out an ecological footprint analysis This provides a simple and of four Team GB athletes, coherent statement of what who all participated in the genuine sustainability can London 2012 Olympic and mean for sporting venues Paralympic Games. This and event organisers. research reveals the range Taking its lead from climate of actions being taken by science and ecological athletes to live a sustainable lifestyle and how this is footprinting, the manual updates the sustainability often counter-balanced by the pressures of being an framework that laid the foundations for London elite athlete in a less than sustainable world. 2012 to incorporate lessons learnt from our practical experience in supporting its delivery. Sustainability-led solutions The ODA also had clear targets during the build phase to drive innovations and cost savings. The total savings have not been estimated, but these LOCOG embedded sustainability into the included the following: procurement process to help achieve £75m • Lean design saves £1.5m – the choice of a cost savings against their budget. Specific cable net roof design, over the steel arch examples of initiatives which delivered cost design, not only used about 1,000 tonnes savings include the following: less steel and resulted in embodied carbon savings of over 27 per cent but also created • Reuse created £8m income – LOCOG set cost and time savings. a stretch target to reuse and recycle 90% of materials, by weight, from temporary • Reuse of crushed concrete on the Stadium buildings and overlay; and actually saved £1m - Reuse of 104,000 tonnes of achieved 99%. This drove procurement of recycled crushed concrete saved £1m and demountable and reusable structures, that more than 20,000 lorry movements. were then easier to sell or hire; generating a cost saving as a result. • On-site soil remediation saved £68m – driven by the target to reuse and recycle • Resource efficiency saved £9.5m – resource 90% of waste, the ODA set up treatment efficiency in electricity and fuel use helped plants to clean and reuse all contaminated generate significant savings against the soil on-site during the construction phase. budget. This created huge savings in costs, lorry movements and fuel emissions compared to • Recycling rebate of £150,000 – by creating sending it off-site for disposal. a revenue sharing contract to incentivise recycling, income from recyclates was • On-site cement saved £750,000 – by shared back to LOCOG reducing waste costs. seeking a greener concrete supplier to deliver by sustainable transport, the on-site solution came in under market rate creating a significant saving. 3 How BioRegional and WWF were involved in the Games In 2004 BioRegional, with the support of WWF-UK, Beyond the new Olympic park and venues, the worked with the London 2012 bid team to write physical legacy of the London games would be the bid sustainability strategy. The aim was for it to tens of thousands of new homes, commercial be “the most sustainable Olympic and Paralympic development and jobs in the surrounding area, along Games of modern times”. The strategy, Towards a with the infrastructure required to service them. One Planet Olympics, centred on the One Planet Living approach and ten principles.4 It was also For WWF UK, the initial impetus to get involved backed by a memorandum of understanding signed came from its campaigning for sustainable new by the three organisations. This ambition was one homes in Britain. For BioRegional, it was the Chief reason why, in July 2005, the International Olympic Executive Sue Riddlestone’s membership of the Committee chose London for the XXXth Olympiad. London Sustainable Development Commission (LSDC) which brought us into contact with the capital’s Olympic bid. The two organisations had already “The One Planet Living concept begun collaborating on using the concept of One created a nice, communicable way Planet Living as a framework for moving towards to talk about sustainability, and sustainability. provided a readymade framework The Olympics capture the world’s imagination and attention in a way that nothing else can. Our hope to differentiate the London bid” was that the power and inspiration of the Games Simon Lewis, 2012 Manager, WWF-UK could be harnessed to achieve major advances in sustainability which would ripple outwards, far This strategy went on to inform the huge amount beyond Stratford. Bringing the Games to London of planning and operational work related to could create a positive legacy which, over time, sustainability which was done by the Olympic would far outweigh any negatives. Delivery Authority (ODA), the London Organising They could be used to secure big sustainability gains Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the large-scale new development in and around (LOCOG) and many public and private sector the site compared to the norm. And they could also organisations involved in the Games over the change people’s behaviour and business thinking and following seven years. practice, particularly in the construction, catering The Games, like other great international sports and food and drink industries and their supply chains. festivals, have huge environmental impacts – think of the extra emissions from use of aviation “We wanted to be able to look and ground transport and hotel accommodation beyond the ‘peak’ environmental linked to hundreds of thousands of spectators, impacts in preparing and hosting competitors and those who serve them. Add in the extra environmental damage, waste and depletion the games and go for the of natural capital due to constructing gigantic new bigger prize of maximising pro- venues and their attendant infrastructure. WWF had often had to warn about the harm being done by sustainability behaviour in the end.” the Games as they move around the world and fight Simon Lewis, 2012 Manager, WWF-UK rearguard actions to reduce it. But we felt London could be different. The chosen Having played a part in London’s bid victory, we site, a vast area of poorly planned and semi-derelict watched developments closely during the run- and contaminated land in Stratford, east London, up to the Games. We acted as “critical friends” 5 was surrounded by low income communities. throughout, as the sustainability delivery strategy Here was an opportunity to make large, mutually and a sustainability plan, entitled Towards a One 6 supporting gains in all three pillars of sustainability – Planet 2012 , were prepared and published in 2007 environmental, economic and social. (the latter was revised and updated in 2009) and as the two main London 2012 bodies, the ODA and LOCOG, worked to implement these.