Is this the greenest Olympics ever? The 2010 Winter Olympics, now underway in Vancouver, have taken steps to make the games eco-friendly. The gold, silver and bronze medals are made of recycled electronics, there's free public transit to every sport venue, and the new buildings meet green standards.
The games themselves earned a "bronze" medal for their green efforts from the David Suzuki Foundation, a Canadian environmental group. The Vancouver-based group applauds the games' energy-efficient venues, clean-energy sources, public transit and carbon offsets.
Let's take a look. The Vancouver Convention Center, home to the media center, has a living roof of 400,000 native plants that capture and reuse rainwater. It also has seawater heating and cooling and on-site water treatment.
The dramatic Richmond Olympic Oval, where speed-skating events are held, has a massive wood wave roof made with local lumber that was salvaged after a pine-beetle infestation. The Oval has an innovative rainwater collection system that uses the water for irrigation and toilet flushing.
Like the Oval, the new buildings in the Olympic Village are designed to meet the standards of the Canada Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program, which certifies that they conserve water, energy and natural resources.
The athletes' village is built to earn gold, the second-highest LEED standard, except for the community center, which aims for platinum, the highest. All the buildings have green roofs, cisterns to catch rainwater, passive solar design, upgraded insulation and windows as well as carpets and paint with low or no VOC (volatile organic compounds.)
They use residual heat from the city's sewer pipes as well as ground-source heat pumps to warm the water that feeds into their hydronic heating system. Their electricity comes from local hydroelectric dams.
You can see a slide show of the village's green features, and read about its developments on Grist, a website, which reports that Vancouver's residents had to help pay for it when private financing collapsed during the recession.
Formerly a brownfield site, the village will be turned into a mixed-used sustainable community of stores, housing, day care and community center after the games. More details on its eco-features are available on the official Olympic website.
Despite its eco-efforts, some folks -- including those atInhabitat, wonder whether this will be the greenest Olympics ever, given the carbon-emitting truck- and plane-loads of snow that had to be carried in to skiing and snowboarding venues.
But really, can you blame Vancouver? After all, winter Olympics need snow, and the Northshore Mountains, typically white this time of year, have been experiencing unseasonably warm temperatures and rain so they're mostly green. It seems Washington picked up the snow that normally would cover Vancouver.
Source: usatoday.com
It's kind of interesting that they're using wood that was damaged by the pin beetle for the olympic podiums.I'm not sure if there's irony here somewhere. Or maybe it's symbolism. I'm not sure. http://www.wfndc.ca/2010olympicwintergames.html/
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