Parched City (27 page)

At the launch, Smith and his colleagues appear to be letting off steam. Ties are loosened and the team enthusiastically doles out custom-designed refill bottles to passersby, some of whom linger momentarily to see why such a fuss is being made about a visually underwhelming object. A compass is even embossed in the necks of the refill bottles (for lost tourists?).

The launch’s atmosphere is convivially filled with animated chatter, until the hubbub is broken by the crackle of an amplified voice. That voice belongs to Bob Duffield, the charismatic Chairman (2010) of the City of London’s Port Health and Environmental Service Committee. He issues the necessary acknowledgements to the regulatory bodies involved before launching into a passionate, political speech about the environmental cost of bottled water. Everyone seems hooked as he momentarily transforms Carter’s Lane gardens into his own Speaker’s Corner. Those lolling on benches languidly with their bottles of Evian perhaps had not banked on a late-morning snack of polemic. Firstly, Duffield outs himself as a hydrophile but the real meat comes as he states: ‘There is no contest when it comes to cost. Tap water at two-tenths of a pence per litre is a hundred and forty-one times cheaper than the best-selling mineral water, which is Evian, and which, even if you buy it in a supermarket, costs over thirty pence a litre. Civil society begins and ends with effective plumbing and we should remember clean water on tap
represented a quantum leap in human history and it is a tragedy that so many people in the world are remaining without clean running water.’
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Duffield is an anthropologist by training, which goes some way to explaining his humanitarian stance on the subject. He makes it apparent why he believes the modest installation is, in fact, a seriously political move. Evidently not a shareholder in Evian, he reminds those gathered that a cargo of this brand, on a truck from Lake Geneva to Edinburgh uses ‘15.77 gallons of diesel and emits 350 pounds of carbon dioxide’. As buses and cars pass in a steady stream on Carter Lane and the air is thick with heat, the taste of carbon emissions is tangible.

Moments after Bob Duffield’s speech concludes, runners from the City of London’s marathon team canter over to hydrate and a queue forms at the fountain. Its slight proportions are overshadowed by the bustling milieu of planning department and environmental health officers who enthusiastically chat about their role in providing this alternative to bottled water in the City.

This fountain does pose an alternative to the notion that the surrounding shops, cafes and supermarkets should be profiting from the commodification of drinking water. As the launch crowd dissipates, a Water Delivery Company vehicle turns down an adjacent street and pulls up beside an office block. The company’s cargo contains ‘Spring Water and Water Coolers for your Office or Home‘; a timely reminder of the powerful water culture the City planners are up against.
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Presumably the modern office building has plenty of taps inside its premises, but this vehicle suggests that plain old London tap water does not meet workers’ hydration tastes. This is somewhat ironic, given that many water cooler suppliers merely re-package tap water. Across the park from my own home in East London, tucked behind a corrugated fence under a railway arch, one such bottling plant busily fills up water cooler products with a filtered version of tap water. A peek behind the fence reveals the
operation’s convoluted apparatus, presumably for the removal of lime from London’s naturally hard water (understandable), but no underground spring or mineral water source is being tapped under this semi-industrial cavern. I doubt this semi-industrial location is the provenance imagined by the people who drink from their office water coolers. The lucrative market for office water, some twenty years from when it was established, suggests it is now a cultural norm for offices to provide chilled water despite the environmental or financial cost and the availability of tap water from kitchens. In some settings, consciousness about the dubious merits of water coolers ensures the success of ‘ethical’ brands, such as AquAid. A portion of its profit is donated to countries with poor water infrastructure. AquAid, in partnership with Christian Aid, even strives to encourage existing clients who purchase coolers filled with spring water to consider moving to their more environmentally sound mains-fed systems.
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As morally enticing as this company’s agenda may sound, it still boasts a range of six different water cooler products, which is not exactly environmentally kind.
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Combining corporate water profits with environmental and social ethics is a dicey public relations business.

Olympic Hydration

Tensions between contemporary urban sustainability agendas, modern consumer desires and the role of corporate sponsorship were blatantly displayed in London’s plans for the Olympic Games. London Mayor Boris Johnson proclaimed his enthusiasm for public fountains back in 2010 when the Freeman Family Fountain was launched: ‘I applaud the arrival of a super stylish new public drinking fountain in Hyde Park. …I am a massive fan of drinking fountains and we are currently considering other ways of encouraging better access to tap water including drinking fountains.’
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As the Greater London Authority was one of the main public agency drivers of the Olympic Delivery
Authority, one imagines that the high sustainability claims for the Games encompassed a free drinking water vision.

Published in 2009, the London 2012 Sustainability Plan
Towards A One Planet 2012
mentioned only one drinking water goal: ‘To reduce the amount of drinking water used in the Olympic Village homes by 35 per cent.’
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The publication also stated that ‘games-time water management policies will be developed by LOCOG as part of the venue operational management plans’.
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Initial discussion about water in the sustainability agenda was entirely couched in the rhetoric of water stress. Therefore, the fact that the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) was in receipt of major sponsorship from Coca-Cola could remain comfortably off the sustainability agenda until the event’s operational phase began. A minor reference in the 2009 policy document briefly raised the issue of food packaging waste, including drink bottles as a recycling concern.
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In the 103-page document, the word plastic appeared only twice, and that was in relation to construction materials. These omissions are rather disingenuous from a sustainability perspective, given that Coca-Cola Great Britain launched its new branding for the 2012 Olympics in March 2009.
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As we saw from the brief forage through Westminster’s bins, that very brand, Schweppes Abbey Well, is already in circulation. Coca-Cola’s stake in the Games had not escaped the attention of Jenny Jones, Assembly Member of the Greater London Authority for the Green Party.

In a 2009 London Assembly session where LOCOG presented an update about its planning, Jenny Jones was first off the starting blocks: ‘What are the requirements of Coca-Cola and McDonalds in relation to the catering arrangements at Games’ venues?’
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LOCOG’s Chief Executive Officer, Paul Deighton, responded: ‘[Coca-Cola’s] right is to be the exclusive supplier of non-alcoholic beverages in the Park….Coca-Cola, of course, has a wide range of products…also juices and water. The second
thing I will just say to you is we have already committed to providing free drinking water in each of the venues as well.’
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Jones pressed Deighton further, ‘So can people bring in their own water, for example?’ His rejoinder: ‘Yes. Absolutely.’ Perhaps it was planned by London 2012, but drinking water’s first prominent mention in its published documents appeared in a press release about catering plans, coincidentally a couple of months after this very meeting: ‘LOCOG has confirmed that free drinking water will be made available at all Games venues.’
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Whilst LOCOG’s commitment to a free drinking water offer, as the event delivery arm of London 2012, could be seen as commendable, this provision is stipulated as important for all public events by the U.K.’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
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It is not really a choice in an event of the Olympics’ profile. For every 3,000 people, one water outlet is advised by the HSE. Such licensing guidelines are well known by one of the designers of the Olympic Stadium.

Architect Megan Ashfield, of the architectural practice Populous, is softly spoken, but the strength of her passion about designing sports stadia is clear. She a strong advocate for embedding sustainable principles in the design of stadia but yet she is more than aware of the challenges this building typology presents. As one of the designers for the Sydney Green Games’ ANZ Stadium, Populous experimented with alternative water systems: ‘We actually used the roof as a water gathering and water harvesting device.’
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Sydney’s grey-water harvest was employed for both sanitation (flushing toilets) and pitch irrigation. For London 2012, she is a chief architect for the main stadium, or ‘the world’s biggest stage’, as she calls the building. Thus far, the sustainability focus for its construction had been on ensuring that the embodied energy in the production and transportation of materials for the Stadium was kept to a minimum. Existing gas pipes, for instance, were used as structural components rather than freshly manufactured custom elements. With a
circumference of almost a kilometre, the ‘giant bicycle wheel on its side’, as Ashfield describes the design, must reflect the project motto conceived by the architects, ‘embrace the temporary’. London’s challenge of scaling capacity up for the Olympics to 80,000 and back down to a minimum of 25,000 afterwards made the Meccano set concept for the building appropriate, as a skeleton that could be fleshed out as required. Some design elements in this skeleton were essential to its final use, such as toilets, however the architect explains that ‘drinking water is one of those factors which can go either way’.

It is evident that Ashfield is ambivalent about the merits of drinking fountains, in sport stadia anyway. One reason is the intermittent use of the stadium as a building typology. She explains that ‘unlike any other building type, they only open for a certain number of days per year. The average is about 26 days per year’. This fact makes Ashfield concerned about water stagnating in pipe-work when the building is not in use. Another concern is the queues fountains might cause, in a building designed for fast circulation of people between sporting events. She worries that a quick gulp from a fountain spout might not satisfy thirst over long periods of spectatorship. Despite her reticence on the fountain front, Megan Ashfield owns of drinking water: ‘It’s a given that you must ensure that people have access to that need.’ She explains how an ‘event continuation supply’ must also be available in an emergency, but that is a larger plumbing issue. With respect to the general free drinking water commitment that LOCOG announced in its press release, Ashfield says there are two likely options, which are either mains-fed tankers or bottled water. And in her opinion, the bottle is the best choice: ‘In terms of flexibility of supply, bottled water is actually the most efficient just because you can order one palette, or you can order 100.’ Coca-Cola’s distributors are likely to nod furiously in agreement. Whatever the architect might have advised at meetings, the final decisions about this were not
hers. Bizarrely, these negotiations involved another team at her architectural practice. LOCOG contracted a team at Populous to provide the ‘overlay’ — the term for the temporary infrastructure that would flesh out the venues — but for reasons of client confidentiality, the two teams were not at liberty to discuss their projects beyond meetings convened by London 2012. Because of the design process, the drinking water solution was added on, rather than integrated to the venues’ final uses.

For James Bulley, LOCOG’s Head of Infrastructure, drinking water was only one issue in his daunting mission to prepare each venue for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Given his hectic schedule, he agreed to a telephone interview with ten months to go until Games time, late in 2011. Bulley had been involved with London’s preparations since the bid stage. His first response on the free drinking water question is candid, given that his paycheque was part-financed by Coca-Cola: ‘One of the commitments we’ve made is that, for spectators at our competition venues, we will supply a source of drinking water…irrespective of what the legislation may require us to do…’
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As previously mentioned, this is really a question of best practice rather than a sustainability choice. However, the method and prominence of the free drinking water offer can be widely interpreted. Drinking water provision first came onto Bulley’s radar early in 2010 when spectator experience and security were discussed. When those customers entered the private, golden-ticketed realm of the Olympic village or other venues, they were not allowed to bring any drink bottles in with them; at least full ones. He describes the security protocol as ‘airport style’. His colleague Paul Deighton’s promise back in 2009 that people can bring in their own water clearly preceded this security protocol.

Airport-style security rules means that if LOCOG did not provide free drinking water facilities, their customers would be forced to buy bottled water. Given the profile of the positive environmental claims of this Olympics, that issue is unlikely to
have slipped under the radar of LOCOG’s Sustainability Team members who, as Bulley exclaims ‘have a bearing on everything’ (this is comforting to hear). He confirms that the sustainability advisors influenced the decision about free tap water provision, however it also involved input from members of the London 2012 Food Advisory Group. Sustain has been a member of this group throughout its planning but despite the organisation’s groundwork on bottled water issues, its representative, and Sustain’s Policy Director, Kath Dalmeny, had this comment on the drinking water discussions: ‘On tap water, I wouldn’t feel comfortable claiming a strong or pivotal influence. We were certainly one of several voices asking for this, but if memory serves me correct[ly] this included the Mayor himself, lots of people in the media…organisations on the Food Advisory Group, and just generally a kind of cultural sense of this would be the right thing to do.’
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Some further research reveals that the drinking water element of the food policy (not sustainability as previously mentioned) was in print as early as December 2009, when many of the venues could still have had drinking fountains plumbed in: ‘London 2012 will not only provide free drinking water at the Games, but will also work with venue owners to urge them to make sure it continues to be available in the Olympic and Paralympic venues beyond the Games.’
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With such strong words, one wonders why this was not written into briefs for the world-class architects tendering to design the venues. More attention to detail at that stage might have resulted in some fountains being integrated into the buildings from the outset. Architects may protest that this level of detail does not appear so early in the design process, but, if it does not, such details will inevitably get left out.