How green are the "Green Games"?

Will the Sydney Olympics be the Green Games? This is the question people are constantly asking Greenpeace. Unfortunately, the answer is not a simple yes or no.

In the early 1990s, Greenpeace took advantage of Sydney's open anonymous contest for the best Olympic 2000 site design to show that, with commitment, a city could showcase environmental solutions.

Forward-thinking architects were consulted, ideas and environmental best practices gathered and a design plan was submitted. The Greenpeace Olympic Village was car-less, powered by the sun, used land carefully, included only non-toxic and eco-friendly materials, conserved and reused resources, and acted as a platform for cutting-edge green technologies. When the winners were announced, Greenpeace's design was among the top five.

Greenpeace then collaborated with alternative power and waste experts, green building designers, academics and our own team of international environmental campaigners to integrate the most progressive standards and help draft them for Sydney into what became the official Environmental Guidelines for the Sydney Olympic Games.

In September 1993, Greenpeace joined the Sydney Olympic bid committee in Monaco to promote the "Green Games" idea as a unique selling point of the city's concept to the IOC and other bidding nations as a possible positive legacy of any Olympic Games.

That was the beginning of what has become one of Greenpeace's most challenging but successful campaigns - to present the Sydney Olympic site as a showcase of environmental solutions.

Ensuring the Commitment

After Sydney won the 2000 bid, Greenpeace remained involved in all aspects of the development and construction of the Olympic site, playing an important "watchdog" role in ensuring that environmental promises became realities.

Greenpeace successfully lobbied the NSW Government to have the Environmental Guidelines become law, regulating the implementation of environmental solutions at the new Olympic site. Greenpeace worked closely with companies tendering to design, build and supply the Olympic site, protesting when the Olympic organisers fell short of their environmental commitments.

So how green are the Games?

The Sydney 2000 Olympics have produced a mix of wins and losses on the environment front. While the wins are impressive, Sydney could have done more to give the planet a sporting chance.

Wins:

1. Environmental Guidelines

The Environmental Guidelines for the Summer Olympics are a strong policy framework. They are a set of rules for green action. When asked if Sydney really will be the first "Green Olympic Games", Greenpeace has to point to the Guidelines as setting Sydney apart from other cities. No other city has stated its environmental objectives on paper before building and even before winning an Olympic bid. When they were written, Sydney’s Guidelines were a progressive set of goals across all major environmental issues.

2. Coca-Cola’s worldwide policy change on greenhouse gas HFCs

As part of our effort to see Sydney’s Environmental Guidelines taken up by Olympic sponsor companies, Greenpeace began a dialogue with Coca-Cola in 1998. We asked the company to provide environmentally safe refrigeration in its equipment during the Games and elsewhere. After a series of meetings and, finally, protests at Coca-Cola offices, the company announced that it will phase out purchasing drink coolers that use the climate-damaging refrigerant HFC by the Athens 2004 Games. Unfortunately, this policy change will not apply to Sydney’s Games and only 100 of 1800 refrigeration units will comply with the Environmental Guidelines.

As one of the world’s largest users of refrigeration chemicals and one of the best know brand names, Coke’s decision, if carried out, will have global implications for the refrigeration industry. It shows that HFCs, like CFCs must, and can be eliminated by the refrigeration and airconditioning industries.

3. New clean up technology for dioxin waste found on Olympic site

New heat treatment technology, indirect thermal desorption (ITD), is being trialed for treating 400 tonnes of dioxin contaminated waste found on the Olympics site. If successful, this technology could offer an excellent, more environmental alternative to incineration or long-term monitorable storage for toxic waste around the world.

4. Renewable energy use at the Olympic site

Solar energy, energy efficient design and Green Power use are among the environmental successes of Sydney’s Games. During the Games, the Athletes’ Village (Newington) will be the world’s largest solar suburb with solar hot water and grid-connected solar electricity. This showcases renewable energy as a real alternative to fossil-fuel energy.

5. The widespread use of PVC-free construction materials

The use of the toxic plastic PVC has been reduced in most Olympic venues and by 80 per cent in the Athletes' Village. Safer alternatives, such as clay and less toxic plastics, have been used for plumbing, cabling, stadium seating and other fixtures. Greenpeace has campaigned for a phase-out of PVC because its manufacture produces hazardous chemicals including dioxin, the most toxic chemical ever produced.

Other successes:

• Water recycling (grey water system) on site,
• Integrated recycling/composting waste strategy for the Games. The use of toxic packaging has been avoided and the strategy follows the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle.
• Spectators will have to travel to Olympic events by train or bus for the first time in modern Olympic history.
• Protection of rare Green and Golden Bell Frog habitat at the Olympic site.

Losses

Unfortunately, Olympic organisers have failed to deliver on Greenpeace’s original vision of a Green Olympics Games. Some of the major environmental failures include.

1. Failure to clean up Homebush Bay and the Rhodes Peninsula, just off the Olympic site

One of Sydney’s greatest failures is that it will leave half a million tonnes of untreated and uncontained dioxin contaminated waste in Homebush Bay and Rhodes Peninsula. The area – approximately 2.5km from the Olympics site – is one of the five worst dioxin waste spots in the world and the only place in Australia where it is illegal to fish. The waste is the toxic legacy of chemical factories Union Carbide and ICI (now Orica) which operated in the area from the 1960s. In 1997Greenpeace found and contained 69 corroding barrels of dioxin waste on the banks of Homebush Bay. The NSW Government has failed to keep its promise of a clean-up before the Games. It has also failed to announce a concrete plan for the cleanup after the Games.

2. Airconditioning and refrigeration in Olympic venues

Sydney’s Environmental Guidelines are very clear that ozone-depleting gases (CFCs, HCFCs) and greenhouse gases (HFCs) should not be used at the Olympics site. Unfortunately, not a single Olympics venue using air conditioning meets these guidelines. Catering and other refrigeration needs have also been met by a systematic and widespread use of CFCs, HCFCs and HFCs. Only a small number of refrigeration units on site will meet the Guidelines.

3. Polluting Holden Car Fleet for VIPs

After initially suggesting it would provide some Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG)-powered vehicles as part of its more than 3000 Olympic VIP car fleet, car maker Holden failed to do so. In a clear case of ‘do as we say, not as we do’, Olympic VIPs will be travelling around Sydney in low-efficiency, petrol burning cars while spectators take the more environmental public transport option. Holden reneged on public promises that even eight per cent of this fleet would be LPG-powered.

4. Management of toxic landfill at Olympics site after Games

Sydney’s Olympics site is a former dumping ground for low-to-medium waste such as municipal garbage, construction waste and asbestos. As organisers have chosen to landfill and drain leachate rather than treat the waste, the site requires decades of environmental management after the Games.

In 1997, The New South Wales Government pledged in Parliament to commit $21 million to a state-of-the-art cleanup of the former Union Carbide site in time for the Games. This site and the adjacent bay constitute some of the most polluted areas in the world. The Government failed to deliver on its promise.

5. Lack of transparency, management difficulties and failure to keep accurate environmental records

Olympic organisers, the Olympic Coordination Authority (OCA) and Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG), were often difficult to work with in relation to their Environmental Guidelines commitments. As the Games approached, Greenpeace found it very hard to gather information about the success and failure of specific environmental initiatives due to non-disclosure, secrecy and inadequate monitoring.

Other failures:

• Bondi Beach Volleyball – the community does not want it and organisers are unsure about the structure’s environmental impact.
• Cancellation of an Environmental Pavilion to educate spectators about Sydney’s environmental efforts.
• Use of PVC in Olympic mascots produced by sponsor, Westpac.
• Ferry system servicing the site is to be used by VIPs only, no spectators.

Since the early days of Greenpeace's efforts to get environmental protection on the Olympic agenda, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch has taken it on board. In his keynote address to the first conference on Sport and the Environment in 1986, Mr Samaranch said: "The International Olympic Committee is resolved to ensure that the environment becomes the third dimension of Olympism, the first and second being sport and culture." The planet needs not only the IOC but also everyone to take up the baton of environmental solutions and run with it after the Games.