Sustainable stadium central to green Olympic legacy

10.02.11

With a decision on the Stadium legacy imminent BioRegional and WWF have sent the following 'open letter' to Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for the Olympics, Baroness Ford, Chair of the London 2012 Olympic Park Legacy Company and Boris Johnson, Mayor of London:


Dear Secretary of State,
 
A sustainable stadium is central to London's promise of a green Olympic legacy
 
In this ‘open letter’ BioRegional and WWF urge you to ensure that sustainability is included explicitly in the criteria for the decision being made about the legacy use of the Olympic Stadium.  
 
BioRegional and WWF worked with London 2012 to devise the sustainability strategy for the Games bid – ‘Towards a One Planet Olympics’.  As part of London’s bid, these were commitments made to the International Olympic Committee.  During the IOC’s visit to London in 2004, our organisations publicly supported London's promise to host the 'greenest Games ever'.
 
Indeed, the Government's stated intention is to make the Olympic Park a ‘blueprint for sustainable living’.  We believe that at the heart of this aspiration is how the Olympic stadium is used in legacy. 

BioRegional and WWF were involved in consultations around the design of the stadium and at the time supported the plan to build a lightweight demountable stadium, with low material use, a low carbon footprint and a white-elephant-proof legacy plan, as preferable to a large permanent venue.  The Olympic Delivery Authority is now rightly proud to have designed a stadium using a quarter of the materials of Beijing’s stadium, and has been vocal about the success of reclaiming over 90% of the site’s demolition material for reuse or recycling during construction.
 
As the Olympic Park Legacy Company prepares to make its decisions later this week on the legacy operation of the stadium site, we urge you to ensure that the decision is faithful to government promises by ensuring that sustainable development criteria are explicitly included in the Company’s deliberations. The criterion 'To achieve a viable long-term solution for the Stadium that is deliverable and provides value for money' must be seen in the context of the environmental challenges of the decades to come and London's repeated promises of a green legacy.
 
We believe that you, like us, will want the decision now being taken about the legacy of the stadium to be consistent with the promises that were made when London made its winning bid to host the Games.

Yours sincerely,
 
Sue Riddlestone                          David Nussbaum
Executive Director                        Chief Executive
BioRegional                                 WWF UK
www.bioregional.com                   www.wwf.org.uk