Bold | LSIP
T
he London Sustainable Industries Park (LSIP) at Dagenham Dock is one of a new breed. The UK’s largest concentration of environmental industries and technologies, it accommodates, supports and grows environmental technology businesses and sustainable industries, all in a symbiotic relationship with each other, sharing resources and exchanging waste or by-products in a closed-loop system. It has been internationally recognised as an exemplar for future developments across the capital, throughout the UK and around the world. The 24-ha scheme is at the heart of the London mayor’s Green Enterprise District. The mayor committed £10.3 million for the infrastructure works programme, now completed. Ultimately, it will provide over 125,000sq m of environmentally friendly business space for one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world, and attract £500 million in private sector investment, and around £35 million public sector funding. Since 2002, nearly 1,400 new jobs and 70,000sq m of employment space have been created. In its collaborative closed-loop system, waste-to-energy projects, combined heat and power schemes, renewable energy technologies and recycling and reprocessing facilities share resources, exchanging waste heat, water or by-products to maximise efficiency, kickstart innovation, minimise waste and save money. Companies also gain a competitive edge: a similar cleantech cluster in Austria shows revenues growing 18% faster in real terms than the global market. Already, the first two tenants on
the park, Closed Loop Recycling plastics facility and the TEG anaerobic digestion (AD) plant, are hooked up: Closed Loop Recycling uses the waste heat from TEG’s AD process, while TEG uses some of the water produced by Closed Loop’s plastic recycling process. And the recently completed infrastructure work has set up the utilities and pipework for all newcomers to be able to benefit from the same system. The work – funded by government and European grants and carried out by VolkerFitzpatrick for the Greater London Authority – also constructed new roads, installed a sustainable urban drainage system, and built footpaths and cycle paths. To maximise the site’s attraction to both companies and workers, the infrastructure work transformed the public realm, with attractive landscaping including 800 new trees, and a lighting sytem, ‘Power Up’, designed by Jason Bruges Studio, which lights up the electricity substation with balloonlike bulbs that change colour as electricity demand changes. With the infrastructure now complete, eight fully serviced plots are ready for green industries in this urban woodland setting, with tree-lined roadways, and a new Sustrans cycleway. All incoming businesses will also be able to benefit from the hub’s two research facilities. The first, a collaboration between the Institute for Sustainability and the University of East London, is undertaking research into ‘cradle to cradle’ (C2C) thinking on waste streams. The C2C demonstrator plant will comprise a 10 x 5m single-storey timber building containing heaters, a special kiln and finishing drums,
and will process by-products from three businesses – food grade plastic from Closed Loop, TEG’s AD plant and Chinook Urban Mining. Chinook’s Energy from Waste facility will process commercial and industrial waste. The process incorporates comprehensive end-stage recycling technology to recover all glass and metal, contributing to the closed loop
economy for materials. The facility will generate circa 20MW of renewable, low carbon electricity and uses clean technology for the recovery process. Chinook will create 55 jobs directly on the LSIP site. The C2C research programme is establishing a set of principles that mimic nature, to change the way we make things with the aim of cutting out all waste, where nothing is sent to landfill or down-cycled, but waste is either up-cycled, reused, or turned into other products. The second, run by the Institute for Sustainability with the Royal College of Arts and Imperial College, will be a three-storey, living laboratory, recreating a ‘real life’ home to study residents’ interactions with energy-saving and water-conserving technology. The data gathered will help design user-friendly ways of reducing consumption, while the building will provide a user-testing facility for the development of new products. The hub will also be home to a marketing suite for LSIP.
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