By this point, we all know the sustainability “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra backwards and forwards and in Pig Latin, too—but the green gurus at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games are hot on another word to live by: reclaim.

Browse the most recent of the Vancouver 2010 Sustainability Reports —the third of five  planned “report cards” of how organizers feel they are meeting their goals—and time and again you’ll land upon the strategy of transforming “waste” into opportunity. Here, a few choice highlights:

• Reclaimed wood: The graciously arching wooden beams of Richmond, BC’s Richmond Olympic Oval speed-skating facility were once British Columbia pine trees.
• Reclaimed heat: Waste heat energy recovered from ice making at the Richmond facility—and several other venues—will be reclaimed to warm the building’s domestic hot water, and to feed into the facility’s space heating and cooling systems. The Olympic Village in downtown Vancouver, BC will be heated in part by warmth reclaimed from a nearby sewer pipe.
• Reclaimed water: Rain landing on the roof of the recently completed Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre in Vancouver will be harvested and piped into the building’s water-efficient toilets and urinals. And thanks to Musqueam First Nation artist Susan Point, a similar system performing the same role at the Richmond Olympic Oval will actually double as a work of art.

In what might be the ultimate reclamation play, once the 2010 Winter Games conclude, the people of British Columbia—and visitors from around the world—will get to enjoy all these deep-green goodies for decades to come.