Greenpeace shows Sydney a yellow card

Greenpeace Australia has awarded a bronze medal to the world's first "green" Olympics, indicating that the organisers of Sydney 2000 could have tried harder to live up to the lofty goals they had set for themselves.

And Greenpeace has every right to issue a report card on the Games. After all, its own input into formulating a comprehensive set of environmental guidelines for Sydney's bid proved decisive in defeating Beijing for the honour of staging this year's summer Olympics.

Representatives of the worldwide environmental activist organisation also accompanied the Australian delegation to the crucial 1993 meeting of the International Olympics Committee in Monte Carlo, to put their case for "giving the planet a sporting chance".

Sydney won the bid by just two votes, largely on the strength of its `green' Games concept, as Juan Antonio Samaranch openly acknowledged at the time. Since then the IOC has resolved to make the environment the "third pillar of Olympism", along with sport and culture.

Eight years ago, in the heady atmosphere generated by the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Australian government held an ideas competition for the design of an athletes' village at Homebush Bay - and an anonymous submission by Greenpeace was among the winners.

Remarkably, the village as built already qualifies as the world's largest solar-powered suburb. Consisting of some 850 houses and apartments, it stands as an international advertisement for the successful use of environmentally sustainable construction methods and materials.

It was always part of Greenpeace's game plan to use the Olympics as a platform to promote the green agenda. And while it has not flinched from criticising the organisers for their failings, it has also freely acknowledged Sydney's very real achievements in fulfilling that agenda.

Take transport, for example. Back in 1993, as part of its bid, Australia's largest city pledged that all of its Olympic venues would be served by public transport; indeed, travelling by train has been the only way for ordinary spectators to gain access to the major events.

Everyone is amazed at how efficiently the rail system has worked, transporting up to 400,000 passengers a day to and from the Olympic Park at Homebush Bay. With trains running at two-minute intervals in peak periods, nobody among the huge, good-humoured crowds has had to wait for long.

The only glitch in this incredibly seamless operation happened last Tuesday evening when a ferocious electric storm and torrential downpour seriously disrupted rail services on the western lines, including a loop serving the Olympic Park. But that surely qualified as an "act of God".

OTHERWISE, it has been a miracle of people movement, for which Sydney's City Rail service deserves a gold medal. The superhuman effort put into supplying so many trains and running them on time has also raised the standing of public transport in this populous, sprawling city.

Visitors arriving at the sparkling Kingsford Smith Airport can avail of a new rail link which zips them into the city's central station in just 12 minutes for a fare equivalent to £5. The largely tunnelled route, opened last May, will be another valuable legacy of the Olympics.

A new light rail line, Sydney's first, operates between the central station and spectacularly redeveloped Darling Harbour, an Olympic venue near the heart of the city and the terminus for its famous monorail which, rather unnervingly, glides along above the footpaths.

But in its 68-page detailed analysis "How green the Games?", Greenpeace condemned Australian car manufacturer GM Holden for reneging on a promise that at least some of the 3,000 cars provided to whisk VIPs and athletes to the various venues would be low-emission vehicles.

Instead, all of the Holden cars are standard gas-guzzling models. Within the Olympic Park, however, transport is provided by a silent fleet of 400 zero-emission solar-powered electric buggies carrying up to 19 passengers - another initiative to "showcase" non-polluting technology.

The use of renewable energy has been a major theme of the Games. With over 90 per cent of Australia's energy generated by coal-fired power stations belching out millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, Greenpeace regards the switch to clean energy at the Olympics as "an important success".

Solar panels on the roof of every home in the Athletes Village for both electricity and water heating will cut their long-term energy consumption by up to 50 per cent, proving that "an average home can be directly powered by the sun's energy" - particularly in a sunny country like Australia.

Maria Atkinson, project manager with Bovis Land Lease, which built the village, believes it will serve as "a catalyst for change" throughout the building industry here; that was what Greenpeace intended - to make pioneering environmental design part of the mainstream.

Solar energy is also being used to help light and heat the Olympic Park's SuperDome, while the site's two hotels - Ibis and Novotel - rely on it for their hot water systems. Blue-and-white light from the beautiful lamp standards along the main boulevard also comes courtesy of the sun.

Even the Olympic torch, which Australian national hero Cathy Freeman used to light the flame, was designed with energy efficiency in mind. Its propane-butane fuel system provided a bright flame that stayed alight in wind and rain, but its unique selling point was that it emitted no smoke.

Hundreds of recycling bins, with separate sections for glass, cans and paper/food waste, are the most visible evidence of environmental commitment. Behind the scenes, millions of worms have been hard at work digesting all the organic waste and turning it into compost. Water on the site is also recycled.

Minimising the use of PVC was another pre-occupation. All of the 110,000 seats in Sydney's stupendous stadium - perhaps the most awe-inspiring amphitheatre for sport anywhere in the world - were made from non-toxic polypropylene. Here, too, energy use has been minimised as far as possible.

Completed in March 1999, well ahead of the Games, Stadium Australia was designed by Bligh Lobb Sports Architecture, an Anglo-Australian joint venture. Its pair of arched polycarbonate roofs provide shading for most spectators, thus reducing the need for extra air conditioning.

HOWEVER, one of the biggest bones of contention between Greenpeace and the Olympic Co-ordination Authority was over the use of ozone-depleting refrigerants for air conditioning systems in virtually all venues - contrary to the agreed environmental guidelines drawn up in 1993.

"The OCA has been notoriously difficult, secretive and often combative in dealing with the environmental agenda," according to Greenpeace Olympics campaigner Rupert Posner. It has also been criticised for its failure to consult community groups before making controversial decisions.

The imposition of a volleyball stadium on Sydney's Bondi beach provoked a bitter dispute. Despite assurances that it would be dismantled after the Games, opposition from local people and Bondi regulars who valued open access to the world-famous beach was so implacable that protesters even clashed with police.

There were also rows between Greenpeace and some of the major Olympic sponsors - notably Coca-Cola over its use of one of the potent greenhouse gases, HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons), in 1,700 fridges at vending points outside the various venues; altogether, they cooled an estimated 10 million drinks.

But last June, within two weeks of staging a colourful protest outside Coca-Cola's Australian headquarters, Greenpeace was congratulating the company on its decision to phase out the use of HFCs worldwide before the Athens Olympics in 2004. Foster's brewery and Unilever's Streets ice-cream quickly followed suit.

These deft corporate moves left hamburger giant McDonald's "out in the cold" as the only Olympic sponsor still wedded to using HFCs for refrigeration, in spite of the availability of greener alternatives; all it was prepared to promise was that it would eliminate PVC from its "Happy Meal" toys.

The bravest decision made by Sydney 2000's organisers was to locate the Olympic Park on a partly contaminated "brownfield" site along the Parramatta River, some eight miles west of the city centre. This meant that the vast infrastructure required would not encroach on virgin forest surrounding the city.

Less than two miles away, on the Rhodes Peninsula, is one of the world's worst dioxin hotspots, containing a cocktail of waste left by Union Carbide and ICI (now called Orica) from decades of chemical manufacturing. Among the products made here was Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used by the US in Vietnam.

Last month, 25 Greenpeace activists created a "crop circle" half the size of a football field spelling out the word TOXIC, with an arrow pointing towards Homebush Bay; it was designed to highlight the New South Wales government's failure to honour its 1997 commitment to clean up the contaminated area.

According to Rupert Posner, only 400 tonnes of dioxin-contaminated waste has been made safe so far - representing a small fraction of the estimated total of 500,000 tonnes of mixed hazardous wastes remaining to be treated. But for the Olympics, he believes nothing at all would have been done.

Not that there is any danger to the thousands of athletes, officials and spectators attending the Games. Industrial waste on the Olympic Park site has been safely capped, with no risk of it leaking out. But Greenpeace insists that the remaining contaminated land must be fully restored.

The green-and-golden bell frog (Litoria aurea) was saved, however. After some 700 of this rare, endangered species were discovered living in a disused brick-pit at Homebush Bay, the Sydney 2000 organisers readily agreed to relocate the tennis courts to conserve the frogs' habitat. The bell frog, which comes in the Australian sporting colours, even became an unofficial Games mascot and is now reported to be flourishing. It may have cost A$1.5 million (about £750,000) to save the site - once used as a set for a Mad Max movie - but it was money well spent.

Last week, Greenpeace presented a new and even more ambitious set of environmental guidelines to the IOC with an eye to greening all future Olympic Games. And though it intends to take more of a backroom role next time out, there can be no doubt about the enormous impact it has made on Sydney.

Had it not been for the Green Games concept, we might all have ended up in Beijing. Perish the thought . . .