Sustainable site clean-up from megaprojects: lessons from London 2012

Abstract

The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are considered to have been a great success for the UK. In building the Olympic Park, another great achievement was the clean-up and reuse of a large area of contaminated land. A remediation project of this size would typically take 5 to 15 years to complete, but the project team completed the remediation work in less than 3 years. This study provides an in-depth examination of the remediation practices at the site, mainly from the perspective of sustainable construction. Data were collected from multiple sources, including project files, publications by various government agencies and non-governmental organisations, as well as qualitative interviews with project team members. The paper first presents a review of brownfield redevelopment and sustainable remediation literature. Sustainability initiatives and achievements in the Olympic Park site remediation project are summarised and discussed. These mainly included suitable remediation strategies, recycling and reuse of contaminated soil by using soil washing and innovative in situ remediation of contaminated groundwater through bioremediation. The paper identifies a number of challenges and lessons learned regarding brownfield remediation in megaprojects, which warrant further technological development and appropriate policy actions to address.

Green and Size-Specific Synthesis of Stable Fe–Cu Oxides as Earth-Abundant Adsorbents for Malachite Green Removal

“…There is a growing need in the environmental remediation field which calls for greener remediation reagents deployed under more sustainable means [87][88][89]. In the present study, a green, ecofriendly method, devoid of hazardous materials (e.g.…”

Sustainability assessment framework and indicators developed by SuRF‐UK for land remediation option appraisal

“…Though there is good evidence that qualitative assessments can be a robust basis for decision-making (Gill et al, 2016;Smith & Kerrison, 2013), many clients, consultants, and researchers prefer at least a semiquantitative or sometimes a quantitative approach. On this basis, SuRF-UK suggests a tiered approach to sustainability assessment (CL:AIRE, 2010), with the entry-level being qualitative assessment (Tier 1), and progression to semiquantitative Quantitative methods based on footprint or LCA methodologies have been used to compare remediation options (e.g., Cappuyns & Kessen, 2013;Hou et al, 2014Hou et al, , 2015ITRC, 2011;Kessel et al, 2008;Visentin et al, 2019), in particular in the case of GR (US EPA, 2008).…”

“…Quantitative methods based on footprint or LCA methodologies have been used to compare remediation options (e.g., Cappuyns & Kessen, 2013; Hou et al, 2014, 2015; ITRC, 2011; Kessel et al, 2008; Visentin et al, 2019), in particular in the case of GR (US EPA, 2008). However, though these assessments are useful in their own terms, the authors' opinion is that they rarely represent a holistic coverage of sustainability considerations (Table 1).…”

Sustainability in Mega-Events: Beyond Qatar 2022

“…Urban development was evaluated in 14 studies [60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73], from wide diverse angles, considering the progress that SMEs may bring to the urban centers where they take place and stressing how they may fail to deliver positive legacies, especially in developing countries. Tourism [74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83] receives special attention as a specific activity that is greatly boosted with a large number of travelers attending the events; transportation [20,[84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91], one part of urban development, is also placed under the light because SME organizers address how transportation systems can be revamped or redesigned under the boost of SMEs.…”