Home-made food ban at 2012 Olympics Live Sites slammed by Commission

The ban on taking your own foods into the Live Sites during the summer Olympics has been slammed in a report out this-morning on London 2012.

Security staff at Live Sites like Victoria Park in east London, where the public could soak up the Games atmosphere free, searched people entering and refused to let them in with their own picnics.

The enforcement has been condemned as “a missed opportunity” by the London 2012 Sustainability Commission’s report.

The ban “compromised affordability and of creating an event for all budgets,” the report says.

Two grandmothers running a hot-dog stall in Vicky Park came to the rescue of families barred from taking food into BT’s Live Site enclosure, the Advertiser reported in August.

Cherie Brett, 43, from Bow, and Kim Duffield, 45, from Poplar, looked after their picnics as a goodwill gesture while the families went into the enclosure and handed them back on their way out.

One woman who was turned away, Kim Crow, 55, had prepared sandwiches at her home in Roman Road, Bethnal Green, for her six-year-old granddaughter Lillie—she was told she could only have sandwiches bought in the enclosure, not her own.

“We can’t afford those prices,” she said at the time. “I could take fruit in, but not if it was in a sandwich—it’s a bit over the top.”

The sustainability report, based on first-hand observations, condemns the practice and says it is a lesson to be leaned for future events.

There were other “missed opportunities” despite the Games being the most sustainable to date.

The Commission is disappointed with the Olympic committee’s “slow development of a comprehensive energy plan” which it describes as a missed opportunity for further carbon reductions.

Overall, however, the report concludes that the Olympics broadly met their objectives—such as zero waste to landfill and 70 per cent waste recycled or composted.