Vancouver 2010 Sustainability Report published

December 22, 2010

The final Vancouver 2010 sustainability report has now been published and is available along with a report summary: http://www.2010legaciesnow.com/vanoc/ 

According to the report, the team reached beyond the environmental pillar to deliver many other positive legacies locally and globally and they set a new sustainability blueprint for future large-scale sporting events. The report shares the successes and challenges on the road to 2010 and outlines how the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Parlaympic Winter Games (VANOC) expanded its definition of sustainability to include not only the environment but also social and economic opportunities that produced lasting benefits.

As part of its legacy for future Organising Committees, VANOC created a new sustainability governance model for organisations undertaking major sporting events, reporting frameworks and a sustainable sport event tool kit for such events. VANOC also demonstrated how a venue program can be designed for legacy use and built to minimise environmental impact, how partnerships with Aboriginal people can make a Games stronger, how socially and economically disadvantaged groups can participate and benefit from the Games, and how greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced through participation in a Games carbon offset program. Further examples and Games firsts are included in the final report.

The final report covers the period from 1st August 2009 to 30th April 2010 and documents VANOC’s sustainability performance leading up to and through Games-time as well as the majority of the decommissioning phase post-Games. Overall, VANOC produced five annual sustainability reports to tell the sustainability story – what was promised, what VANOC had control over, and ultimately how VANOC performed against its goals.

As a core value and a strategic corporate objective, sustainability influenced the way VANOC approached challenges, opportunities and decision-making related to environmental, economic, social and legacy aspects of the Games. In addition to outcomes achieved in the 2009-10 reporting period, the report features legacies relating to each of VANOC’s six corporate sustainability objectives.

The Sustainability report represents VANOC’s self-reporting on its sustainability performance. Meeting a commitment to stakeholders, VANOC engaged a third party auditor to perform assurance on selected key performance indicators in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 reports. They found the subject matter to have been represented fairly in accordance with the world renowned Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (2006), industry standards and VANOC’s internal management definitions.

Aside from VANOC’s own reporting, two independent studies examining the impact of the Games are in progress. They are the Olympic Games Impact (OGI) study (www.ogi-ubc.ca) and the Joint Canada-British Columbia Socio-Economic Impact Study of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (www.2010wintergamessecretariat.com).