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Cleaning up the Park

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Cleaning up the Park

Across the 2.5 square kilometre Olympic Park, a huge amount of work is transforming what was an industrial landscape into an Olympic Park for London 2012.

  1. Demolition

    A vast clean-up operation has taken place on the Olympic Park site and almost 200 buildings have been demolished to clear the site for construction.

  2. Dismantling buildings

    Newer buildings that had to be removed were dismantled rather than demolished. These steel-framed buildings were taken down by hand and will be re-constructed elsewhere.

  3. Excavating soil

    Because ground levels vary across the Park, over one million cubic metres of soil has been excavated.

  4. Site laboratory

    A team of 60 specialists, based in an on-site laboratory, is carrying out a range of tests to check whether excavated soil needs cleaning and if cleaned soil is fit for reuse within the Park.

  5. Soil washing

    Over 800,000 cubic metres of soil is being washed in specialist machines to remove contaminants such as oil, petrol, tar, arsenic and lead.

  6. Creating the right ground levels

    Almost the entire Olympic Park site has now been investigated. Once cleaned, the soil is used to create the right ground levels needed for construction.

  7. Separating materials for recycling

    The ODA aims to reclaim as much demolition material as possible and meet its target of recycling or reusing 90 per cent of materials.

  8. Recycling materials

    With the majority of the site now clear, the materials from demolished buildings are reclaimed so they can be reused or recycled.

  9. Sorting materials by hand

    Specialist operatives pick out any remaining recyclable materials by hand. This helps the ODA to meet its commitment of keeping the amount of waste sent to landfill to an absolute minimum.

  10. Reusing materials

    Crushed brick and concrete rubble is being reused to create roads within the Park and to form a base for construction.

  11. Preparing the Stadium bowl

    On the Olympic Stadium site alone 6,500 tonnes of crushed concrete was spread during the final stages of forming the Stadium bowl.