GOING FOR GREEN

Jo Carris is energy and waste manager for The Olympic Delivery Authority, and is tasked with ensuring that London’s Games are the greenest yet.

HOW WILL THE OLYMPIC PARK BE GREEN?
We’ve got a target for 90 per cent recovery and recycling of our construction waste, which is huge. Industry normally recycles between 50 and 80 per cent of waste, but we’ve got an effective strategy here. All our contractors separate their waste at source, so they’ve got bins for metal, plastic, wood and concrete. Then it’s taken to an on-site waste consolidation centre, compacted down and sent away by barge to be recycled.

We’ve also got a target to reduce our carbon emissions from the built environment by 50 per cent against a 2006 baseline. We’re doing that by constructing energy-efficient buildings, and we’ve got a unique combined heat and power system that supplies energy efficiently. We’ve also got a biomass boiler, and a large-scale wind turbine, which is our big renewable energy beacon.

IS THE TURBINE SYMBOLIC OR WILL IT REALLY GENERATE ENERGY FOR THE GAMES?
It’s a two-megawatt wind turbine, which you would normally find in a rural environment. It’s a massive structure – the blades are 40m long. We feel it represents what we’re trying to do here – pushing sustainability and innovation in the built environment.

But two megawatts is also significant. We’ve got a renewable energy target of 20 per cent renewable energy on the park, and the turbine is able to provide a large proportion of that – about 12 per cent of our total renewable energy target.

WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FACING SUSTAINABILITY AT THE GAMES?
The recession is one to be aware of because traditionally, if there are cost pressures on a project, the sustainability elements can often be the first thing that will be cut.

But we’ve got good systems and processes in place to make sure that our projects are delivering on their targets. We track and rate them every month, and so far we’re on course.

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