A quick look at the greener aspects of Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics

I shall make no apology for the Olympics blogs, when it comes to 2012 and London – you’ll thank me for them!

As I may have mentioned… last week I spent a fantastic week in Vancouver looking at the Winter Olympic Games, from a business point of view. This Olympic Games was branded a greener Olympics and the Canadians did exceptionally well, although some may say it was browner rather than greener due to the lack of snow ;-)

As a courier service, we are interested in the transportation aspect of the Olympics. Transportation comes in 2 guises – movement of goods and movement of people. In case you didn’t know, the Olympics are the biggest non war related movement of people worldwide. That’s a lot of people to transport.

Transporting people
With over 350,000 people descending into Vancouver, there can be no margin for error. Vancouver has spent a lot of time and money on making the transportation as green as possible. If we were awarding medals, public transport would get a gold. With a newly built Skytrain system collecting people from the airport and transporting them to downtown Vancouver, and then all subway, streetcars, sea buses and buses were free if your were Olympic ticket holders. Traffic in the area is down 30% as people when given the option of driving or using public transport, chose public transport. An important lesson for the London 2012 Games here.

If you decided to cycle you could park your bicycles for free for the duration of the event with the Bicycle Valet company.

The local seaplane company is carbon neutral and free transport via buses was available up to the mountain events too.

Transporting goods

The local courier companies in Vancouver adapted well to the Olympics, many trained up on foot and bicycle couriers to get around any traffic issues, whilst there is less on the roads, there was more congestion with the Torch Relay and Protests.

So far there are no tales of woe like there were at the Atlanta Games, which is a good thing – it means lessons have been learned.

The greener flavour

Richmond Olympic Oval  preparations for  2010 ...
Image by janusz l via Flickr

As I mentioned at the top, these Games have had a greener flavour. There are many examples of creatively used items to recycle and reuse. The Olympic and Paralympic Village in Whistler reuses captured methane gas from a former landfill site for energy. The main heat source for the communities is waste heat recovered from the wastewater treatment system.

The roof of the Richmond Oval has been marveled over by many, the wood reclaimed from parasites and instead of being destroyed, it is now a much admired soon to be city treasure.

It’s hard not to be impressed by the efforts made by the Canadians to leave a legacy with a smaller carbon footprint than most.

I hope London 2012 gains inspiration and can deliver the same, if not better :-) .

Sarah

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Our twitter #followfridays

Having spent the last week in Vancouver, I have come to appreciate twitter a lot more than I thought!

Our first follow Friday is @stevenhealey who kindly sent a google map of the tobaccanists in the area when I ran out of cigarettes – thanks Steven you are a life saver.

@comfort_selling and @babssaul for their hard work on Sarah’s blogs, for some great articles on life, the universe and everything in between then visit http://www.birdsontheblog.co.uk where some brilliant business women put the world to rights.

@angieT1972 for ‘Auntie’ services

and @bttradespace without them, there would have been no trip!

Kevin

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Wanted: Vancouver based courier companies – pls RT

If you are a courier company based in Vancouver, would you like to meet for coffee?

My wife and I will be over for the opening of the Olympic Games. In 2012 we have the Olympic games coming to London, and if you have the time, we would love to meet you and talk about business, in particular if yours has benefited from the Olympics being held locally.

The Olympic Flag flying in Victoria, British C...
Image via Wikipedia

The Olympics is the biggest non war related movement of people across the globe, and we are thrilled to be coming to your city to see them.

We would also like to meet local couriers (and my wife would love to video you for an interview on this blog, but I can take the batteries from the Flip ;-) ) and talk about the challenges in order to understand them and to prepare our own business.

Also too exchange best practise, ideas (we are continents apart, so look at things differently – I bet a little bit of snow doesn’t bring your business to a standstill)  and legislation. We are green and ethical in our business outlook and it would be pleasant to meet similar minded people.

So, if you are a courier company in Vancouver, please drop us a line in the comments or email sarah@arrowlighthaulage.co.uk and we can schedule a coffee.

regards

Kevin

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