Will the London Olympics be Green or in the Red?

For the doom mongers, the chances of preparing for a green Olympics during a recession are slim. For its sustainability chief, the Games present an uncompromisable opportunity.

"I'm not an NGO; I'm not banging the table about impractical and impossible objectives," said Shaun McCarthy, whose job it is to make sure the delivery bodies stage the most sustainable Games in history.

Mr McCarthy, 51, believes the economic downturn will ease pressure on the budget and he is unwilling to make concessions. He said the budget was estimated on high commodity prices that are now declining, and a buoyant construction industry that is currently scratching around for work.

"There is no excuse for compromise around any of the sustainability standards," he said.

Ealing-born McCarthy dedicates 130 days each year to chairing the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012. The rest of the time he is director of Action Sustainability, a social enterprise with a mission to inspire sustainable procurement.

He is not, by his own admission, "an extreme sandal-wearing greenie." But he does think environmentalism is the opportunity of a generation.

"Climate change is a similar level of catastrophic event to World War II unless we do something about it," he said. "People were faced with desperate situations so they stepped up to the mark and did what was necessary."

According to Graeme Hayes, senior lecturer at Aston University, the Games are showcase events for flexible technological solutions. "Cities are keen to demonstrate their good governance, and they are keen to place themselves in the centre of the media spotlight," he said.

The Olympic Stadium being built in London. Photo credit: Nigel Chadwick

"The environmental considerations are not necessarily the most expensive parts of the budget," he added, noting that commitment to recycling and having organic food concessions have greater symbolic value than cost implications.

Dr Hayes is worried, however, that the Games site will be a distraction and produce a massive gated community post-2012.

"The Zaha Hadid aquatics centre looks marvelous in model form, but where are the local leisure centres in the Olympic boroughs? Where are the non-competitive facilities?"

Mr McCarthy's role in the Commission is to help create benefits across the UK through job brokerage and by encouraging small businesses to participate in the supply chain.

"The sustainability imperative for businesses is ultimately about competition," he said. "They used to compete on price and the attractiveness of a product; the next dimension of competition is about sustainability."

Retail giants Marks & Spencer and ASDA are already taking steps to improve their corporate responsibility profile, he said.

Mr McCarthy is also pushing for the Olympic board to treat carbon as a strategic business issue. There needs to be a full understanding of the carbon footprint of the Games and a strategy for how to deal with it, he said. "This is not just about energy on the site: It's about how we can influence people's behavior."

Jill Savery, 2012 project manager with BioRegional, an environmental NGO that helped draft the Olympic bid with WWF-UK, voices the same concern. "Our increasing consumption means we leave less space for other species to flourish, and we are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate," she said.

Ms Savery believes the targets are achievable but said there is room for improvement.

"Although the Olympic Delivery Authority reports they have met their target of reusing or recycling demolition material, we believe that more demolition materials could have been reclaimed for reuse," she said.

There is a greater concern: The Olympics, said Dr Hayes, are all about staging and celebrating excess, they are about consumption and they are about capital. "I'm not sure there could now be such a thing as a green Games, or for that matter a civic Games," he said. "I'd like to be wrong on that, but I don't think it'll be in 2012."

But Mr McCarthy is committed to pushing boundaries in order to achieve his goals. "The way I operate is about really understanding the art of the possible," he said.