Recycling and wild cats keep London busy

Commuters travelling into London from the eastern suburbs are treated daily to the sight of construction vehicles, yellow lights blinking in the winter gloom, snaking across huge mounds of earth.

At first glance it appears a bleak, unpromising landscape, but in four years' time this previously neglected part of the English capital will become the centre of the sporting world.

While the focus now is thousands of kilometres away in Beijing, where preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games are entering the home straight, London's organisers (LOCOG) are setting a steady pace and preparing to lengthen their stride.

A small delegation from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited LOCOG headquarters last week.

The fact that they slipped in and out almost unnoticed by the ever-sceptical media was a relief for 2012 Olympics chief Sebastian Coe and his team.

While questions about the budget and security will inevitably resurface and construction hiccups are unavoidable, so far the physical progress of the 2012 project is impressive.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) are not slow in trumpeting their achievements.

A regular stream of media updates range from the rehousing of hundreds of feral cats and amphibians to the removal of Japanese knotweed and the arrival of giant soil-washing machines at London's Olympic Park.

URBAN RENEWAL

This week, it was announced that construction of the main Olympic stadium will begin three months ahead of schedule, in May. Some 800,000 tonnes of earth, some of it contaminated with low-level radiological material, has been removed to create the bowl that the 80,000-seater arena will sit in.

Work on the Zaha Hadid-designed Aquatics Centre, another of the Big Five projects in the 2.5-square-km park, is also on schedule with construction due to begin by the summer.

A tour of the site reveals the enormity of the project, one of the biggest urban renewal schemes the country has seen. It also illustrates the lengths being taken to ensure that the promise of the most sustainable modern Games is delivered.

According to David Higgins, the chief executive of the ODA, 90 percent of demolition material is being recycled or re-used in the construction of the Games facilities.

It seems nothing is thrown away, including 80 lampposts, 160 manhole covers and hundreds of tonnes of bricks. Concrete from old buildings is crushed up and used for constructing roads within the park.

Trees that are felled are being sawn up and left in tidy piles, ready for use in the park's nature habitats.

Higgins is particularly fond of the four giant machines that wash, shake and sieve contaminates such as arsenic and tar out of truckloads of soil.

Soil samples are taken to an on-site laboratory where a team of 60 scientists test them for dangerous substances.

RUBBISH SORTED

A 35-tonne recycling machine is sorting 70,000 cubic metres of industrial and domestic rubbish from an old landfill site where the VeloPark and Olympic Village will stand.

Inside white tents, an army of workers even sift through rubble by hand, separating plastics, rubber and glass to be sent for recycling.

Whole steel-framed warehouses have been unbolted and packed away, ready for use somewhere else.

The clogged-up rivers and canals that criss-cross the site are being regenerated to enhance wildlife and 30 bridges will be built to make the park accessible.

Ugly electricity pylons across the landscape are soon to be pulled down after a tunnelling project to bury cables was completed.

Dan Epstein, head of sustainable development and regeneration for the ODA, said London hoped to raise the bar for environmental standards.

"Our aim is to make this project an exemplar project which sets new standards for sustainable development and leaves a lasting legacy," he said.

"The commitment to reclaiming as much demolition material as possible is key to our strategy and, so far, we are exceeding our 90 percent target. This is unprecedented for a project of this size and scale."