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Home > Recycling > 95% of the materials recovered from the nine-month long demolition phase of the London 2012 Olympic site are being recycled on site

95% of the materials recovered from the nine-month long demolition phase of the London 2012 Olympic site are being recycled on site

The 2012 Olympics have been billed as the greenest so far, with plenty of critics saying that that’s still just not green enough. Here’s some information from the source article explaining how recycling is happening on the Olympic village building site. The green initiatives are being called a business decision, but does it really matter what the motives are, as long as it is being done in the most environmentally way possible?

Concrete is crushed to form hardcore for the roadways and its reinforcing rods are removed and recycled. Steel is unbolted and used again where suitable.

Wood is chipped and composted locally; trees are logged and set aside for wildlife habits, bricks stacked up for re-laying.

The constructors say this is unprecedented and they’ve never gone to these lengths before to recycle.

The green initiatives are however partly driven by business pragmatism – new EU directives say dumping such waste carries a penalty of £200 per tonne. [BBC]