SUSTAINABILITY ’ S EARLY ADOPTER
CASE STUDY
AECOM is creating and implementing a Sustainability Management Plan for San Diego International Airport , focusing on five key areas - air quality and greenhouse gas emissions , climate resilience , waste management and recycling , clean transportation , and biodiversity . Riley comments : “ San Diego has already done an incredible amount of work in making the airport more sustainable in areas such as waste management and carbon neutrality . Our job here is to develop the action and implementation plan to achieve these goals .” More about the sustainability programme for the airport can be found here .
have a much broader and more engaging discussions . It brings the airport to life in some ways .”
From airline carriers and ground transportation companies to retail outlets and parking operators , airports contain numerous different stakeholders . This leads inevitably to the question of whether this in itself presents Riley an additional challenge . “ It really does ,” he answers .
“ All of these different entities have varying levels of interest in sustainability . Airports realise they can implement actions on carbon , energy and waste on their own where they have more control , but where airports are starting to look now is how do they engage tenants , lease holders and suppliers like ground transportation companies , taxis , transportation firms like Uber and others . How do we make this airport more sustainable in the areas we don ’ t control ? That is the key question many clients are asking , and it is a vast challenge – with airports and all other sectors that also rely on other entities to implement their business model .”
While Riley admits there is no silver bullet , and that different airports bring with them different challenges , he does revert back to the importance of initiative being shown at the very top . “ If the airport director is saying we take sustainability seriously ,
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