Vancouver's 2010 Olympic Paralympic Village has aimed to include green sustainability standards in the athletes’ residence and surrounding landscape in hopes of setting an environmental building model for others to emulate. A sustainable Olympic Games will have to meet triple bottom line economic, social and environmental goals to truly be rated as successful.

During the Games, the Olympic village will be home to over 2800 athletes and officials. This site is part of 11 acres of redeveloped park and waterfront in Vancouver’s Southeast False Creek, coincidentally across the creek from the former Vancouver Expo 86 site.

Some of the Olympic village green initiatives include:

• A Neighbourhood Energy Utility (NEU) to provide heat and hot water to the Olympic Village whereby the heat is recovered from untreated wastewater. This green technology will be supplemented by solar hot water.
• LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) building design.
• Water use reduction: including reuse of rainwater for toilets and landscape irrigation.
• Green roof landscaping.
• Solar panels and solar blinds.
• Net Zero energy building that will produce as much energy as it uses.
• Electric vehicle chargers and car share vehicles.
• Raised planters and composters to encourage gardening.
• Bicycle and walking paths.

The list (courtesy of the city of Vancouver) is impressive.

After the games, the city of Vancouver will be putting most of the residential units up for sale to hopefully recoup the extensive costs they have taken on to develop the property in a shaky recessionary world economy. Due to security conerns, the public will not be able to get up close to view the Athlete's Village until after the games.

Critics might ask: will this “green” Olympic Village be able to ward off the ghosts of cost over-runs and broken promises of affordable housing that may haunt its future? Questions have also been raised as to whether "green" initiatives will fully mitigate the large carbon footprint of any contemporary Olympic Games?

The City of Vancouver has been mounting an aggressive city-wide sustainability plan and public relations campaign involving the Olympics to become the “greenest city in the world.”