Right from the starting line, the 2012 London Olympics have been billed as the ‘green games’. Part of the city’s bid for the Games was that the event would be, as far as possible, carbon neutral. Waste would be kept to a minimum and the facilities would have ‘legacy’, which means they would be designed to have a long-term use after the closing ceremony.
Above all, materials used in the arenas, infrastructure and athletes’ accommodation, would be sustainable, with all timber and wood products certified under one of the schemes approved by the government’s Central Point of Expertise on Timber.
Naturally all these declarations of good eco intent have got the environmental NGOs watching like hawks to make sure the Olympic Development Authority (ODA) lives up to its fine planet protecting pledges. The fear of the timber trade, still, unfortunately building material supllier target number one for some green groups, was that uncertified wood would slip through the net. The story would then be splashed across the media by the NGOs and the industry’s environmental reputation would once more be dragged through the mud.
But now look what’s happened! Last week we reported in TTJ that a sub-contractor working on the Olympics site ordered softwood and sheet materials for a structure to support a temporary rail line. What they didn’t include in their specification to merchant T.Brewer, however, was the slightest sniff of a reference to certification. But this story didn’t surface because the uncertified material was uncovered by some environmentalist investigation. It came to light because of the vigilance of the Brewer team. The management were alerted when the order came in and the company went back to the sub-contractor and, despite the fact that thousands of pounds were at stake, told them that they couldn’t supply it. After some initial toing and froing and, apparently, some frayed nerves and tempers on account of the fact that the delivery was urgent, alternative, certified material was supplied and everyone, the sub-contractor, Brewer’s and the ODA, who by this point had been appraised of the problem, were happy.
What the incident underlined was that the ODA’s rules on sustainable procurement and certification haven’t sufficiently filtered down the chain beyond the principal ‘tier-one’ contractors to the hundreds of sub-contractors involved in Olympics developments . The Authority says that procedures will be tightened when it has set up its timber supply panel, a group of selected timber businesses which will provide or act as the conduit for the bulk of wood products going onto the main Games site. In the interim, however, it looks as though timber traders are going to have to keep their wits about them and monitor supply to Olympics projects themselves to make sure uncertified material doesn’t get specified.
The good news that this episode highlights is that the timber trade is willing and able to do this policing. It was Brewer’s that raised the alarm, alerted the sub-contractor and brought the matter to the attention of the TTJ and the ODA. We’ve said for a long time that the vast bulk of the industry are among the most environmentally proactive of any manufacturing and construction materials suppliers. They’re putting enormous effort into the battle against illegal logging and the advancement of certification and they really do care about the environmental credentials of their products. This story proves our point.
