This document is also available as a PDF file that includes photos and illustrations.

For two weeks in August, the Beijing Olympic Village was the temporary home of more than 16,000 athletes, coaches, and officials from around the world.

A project of that scale had the potential to be a huge drain on the environment. But NRDC saw the Olympics instead as an opportunity to promote green building technology. We worked with Olympics officials to make sure that the project featured extremely high energy and water efficiency, fullscale use of renewable energy, extensive use of recycled materials, and a zeroemissions reception center. Thanks to these cutting-edge green building techniques, the Olympic Village was awarded LEED-ND Gold certification, one of the world's highest grades for environmental community design. The environmental benefits reached the entire city -- our green building strategies eliminated 8,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in Beijing during the Games and will continue to prevent emissions of about 670,000 tons each year. That staggering amount of pollution avoided is the equivalent of taking 268,000 cars off the road each year.

See the complete China section of this report (in pdf format, 313k) for more about our work, including a Q&A with Barbara Finamore, Director of NRDC's China Program.

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