Julian Goldsmith: Shaun McCarthy is a Chair of the Commission for Sustainable London 2012. Its his job to encourage companies involved in Olympic Games in England to conform to sustainability standards promise by the organizers to the IFC. He can't force any of them to stick to these rules though. He has to persuade them. Its a good thing for them to do. So, Shaun first of all, what do the games organizers mean by sustainability?Shaun McCarthy: Okay, the games organizers take a very wide definition of sustainability. So, taking in to account social economic and environmental aspects but actually divided down into what they call five key things, so climate change, waste, biodiversity, healthy living and inclusion. So, one way or another that picks up pretty well all of the aspects of sustainability that we would expect them to cover.Julian Goldsmith: Okay and what a business is expected to do to achieve those sources of sustainability standards?Shaun McCarthy: Okay, the delivery buddies have set some quite soft standard for sustainability from everything from expectations around skills and employment employing local people in the region coming to work on the Olympic park. A fantastic amount of work has been done to actually reduce the energy in carbon footprint of the games, waste management, etcetera. Businesses, I think need to understand that they need to stop to measure the incorrect of what they do in a very broad sense. So for instance, the supply of concrete and the carbon footprint is measured all the way back to the—Julian Goldsmith: And what can you do to persuade them to raise those levels of awareness and to sort of implement those sorts of things into the processes?Shaun McCarthy: So, I dont have any direct power so I can't intervene as such in the process but I do report directly to the senior politicians so I report to the Olympic Board which is Chad by—chair of the board. We have an independent relationship with the public and the media. All of our reports are independent.So, we are able to actually be out there in the public domain and reporting directly to the politicians of what's happening more. Were able to make recommendations. I think that level of direct reporting and the direct relationships with me during the stakeholders means that everybody do listen to us. We need to be pragmatic and realistic as well. So, we need to manage that relationship very carefully in such a way it would be realistic with the buddies delivering the Olympics but challenging.But were not seeing it as a soft touch by people like Green Peace and friends of the earth. They look very hard on what we do and expect just to be quite tough and quite challenging. So, its a balancing act to be made all the time.Julian Goldsmith: Okay, so in your past career what sort of experience can you draw run to achieve that sort of change management?Shaun McCarthy: Okay, my background is very much in lot corporations. I've worked for various different very large corporations in my 25, 30-year career. Mostly in commercial roles but its got green all over the last 10 years so I developed speed and carbon strategy in 2002 by way of example when pretty much nobody had a common strategy. It was quite ground breaking. Then I go to involved in sustainability, in procurement and in construction. I've done a lot of work in social economic sustainability in looking to how we can bring small local enterprise as in to various levels of the supply chain for a very large organization as part of those. And then I was involved in the London sustainable development commission for the last five years or so which is an advisory group to the mare on sustainability strategy. So, I think what I can bring is a very solid business experience combined with relatively recent experience in sustainability and all science total impression about the subject so I think its businesses if they're going to survive and thrive in the future must grasp this agenda, otherwise theyll regret it. So, I think its something that must be done.Julian Goldsmith: Is there a particular approach that you take to persuading these companies who may or may not be it will be a hostile to having more benchmarks I did to their requirements?Shaun McCarthy: I think there's such a strong emphasis on sustainability around number 2012 now particularly we spoke as it tends to attract sponsors who want to be associated with the sustainable games. So, I think there's a real commercial imperative for sustainability here if you can set your stalls being really sustainable then actually a lot of corporations want to come to work with you. So, I think weve got a willing audience and then we can actually start to guide them in terms of some of the big issues that really need to be addressed, it is through domain delivery buddies.Julian Goldsmith: Okay. Now, bunny is a little bit tight to these days. Do you think its a more difficult task for the businesses involved in a 2012 games to achieve those sustainability targets? Do they want to do this as much as they did when times raised here?Shaun McCarthy: It is difficult. We are in tough times now and certainly the economic climate is completely different to the climate when we won the bid. I think with my view is that we need to look at sustainability as an investment then consider it as an investment decision but when people cites me—yes it might in terms of capital today but actually are we investing for a future? I looked back to the recession in the 80s when time is so tough so what did physicist do? They stopped training people, they practically abandoned the apprenticeship. And now, were on the position where we have a society of graduates but we can't get diploma. And we can't get the vocational skills that we need. We cant say that was very bad decision. People may well full of the time—look, apprenticeship is training. This is a luxury, its added extra time too tough we can't afford anymore and I was surrounded in the early 80s thats what happened.I think if we start to abandon sustainability objectives now, when we come out of recession, climate change will still be an issue Waste of land will still be an issue. Equality will still be full. These things will still be there. In fact they'll be there much more strongly in the future. And smart companies need to think about some of these issues as investing in what the government would all agree they can make. Its coming. Itll be there when we come out of recession so we need to think of these things as sensible investment decisions. It is not sustainability it will cost. But its thinking about its an investment rather than a revenue cost.Julian Goldsmith: Shaun, thank you very much.Shaun McCarthy: Thank you.