Sustainable Remediation: Which Approach Shall I Use?

Sustainability in remediation of contaminated sites is a recent concept that aims at having a holistic approach capable to assess the global impacts of remediation at the environmental, economic and social levels. A common definition and guidelines shared at international level are still lacking and various approaches and tools are used. A "green remediation" approach is usually based on: i) the environmental footprint analysis (EFA), which can be performed with tools such as SEFA, SRT or SiteWise, or ii) a life cycle assessment (LCA), for which SimaPro is the most used tool, though not specific for cleanup purposes. A sustainable remediation process should also consider economic and social issues. As far as costs are concerned, the available tools include RACER and REC. No tools are available to quantify social benefit, which might include commercial, health or education services, increase in local occupation or real estate values.