Green Remediation or Sustainable Remediation: Moving From Dialogue to Common Practice

Abstract

Different points of view have emerged concerning how to best consider and address the largely unexamined ancillary environmental impacts, and more particularly the social and economic impacts, of remediation activities. These views are generally categorized as “green remediation” and “sustainable remediation.” This article dissects the commonalities and differences between “green” and “sustainable” remediation approaches. Several key obstacles to the broader implementation of sustainable remediation practices are identified. Similarities identified among the two concepts offer a common ground and areas of collaboration. The objective of this article is to support maturation of the remediation industry by addressing the opposition to and supporting the implementation of sustainable remediation practices, including offering recommendations for a path forward. ©2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Comparison of international approaches to sustainable remediation

“…As shown on Table 1, there are several similarities among the two domains, and they complement each other with the overarching objective of achieving a net benefit across environmental, economic and social concerns. In the US, the link between these domains assists in highlighting the successful outcome of incorporating sustainable practices in remediation (Hadley and Harclerode, 2015). However, the pursuit of sustainable remediation at a brownfield does not come at the expense of overall sustainable redevelopment (cf.…”

“…property reuse often times increases the quality of life of the local and surrounding communities) . Thus, the concepts of site assessment and cleanup of brownfields in the USA have a strong overlap with the concepts of sustainable remediation (Hadley and Harclerode, 2015).…”

Quantifying Global Impacts to Society from the Consumption of Natural Resources during Environmental Remediation Activities

“…Today, the remediation industry is progressing toward incorporation of sustainability benchmarks into the decision‐making process to evaluate environmental and cost implications from remedial actions. This concept, referred as sustainable remediation, identifies, catalogs, and addresses impacts to the environment, society, and economy (i.e., the triple bottom line of sustainability) during cleanup activities (Hadley and Harclerode ; US EPA , 2012a; ITRC 2011a, 2011b; Reddy et al. ; Bardos et al.…”

“…A commonly implemented sustainable remediation practice is to choose and design a remediation process that consumes the least amount of natural resources (Hadley and Harclerode ; US EPA 2010, 2012a; ITRC 2011a, 2011b; Ellis and Hadley ). Remediation activities typically consume large amounts of energy, water, and other natural resources both on‐ and off‐site.…”

“…In addition to assessing environmental implications from cleanup activities, consideration of social and economic effects while deciding the remediation option is typically limited to the cost of project implementation, community acceptance, and sometimes worker health and safety risk (Hadley and Harclerode ; NAVFAC ; US EPA 2012a). Apart from workers’ accident risk, there are many other socioeconomic factors that could be considered, including quality of life, property values, ability to reuse property, economic vitality, cultural resources, and related externality cost (i.e., social cost of environmental metrics) (Bohmholdt ; Harclerode et al.…”