Clean up your act

With developers looking to gain a competitive edge on sustainability, remediation methods have never been more important.

Remediation by its nature focuses on the mitigation of a perceived hazard, the management of which may at times be in conflict with longer-term notions of sustainability. Remedial actions undertaken require natural resources, equipment, materials and fuel, and the work inevitably results in emissions.

Increasingly, the realisation is that site clean-up must strike a balance between the available technologies, operational timescales and wider environmental benefits.

Policy and consumer pressures

Aside from the obvious benefits of sustainable remediation to the wider environment, developers are now witnessing the commercial value of the new technologies. Such technologies may be used to demonstrate their efforts in delivering a balance of sustainable remediation options against liabilities and cost.

The forthcoming supplement to planning policy statement 1, Planning and Climate Change, will place obligations on developers to demonstrate their sustainable credentials, from site remediation to low-carbon technologies in the finished building.

Cost is a factor in choosing to undertake site investigation works in a sustainable way.

It would be wrong to assume sustainable methods are always more expensive. If the nearest landfill site is 200 miles away, sustainable remediation may be more simple and cost-effective, but with the penalty of increased timescales towards final closeout.

In the UK, landfill disposal is increasingly becoming less cost-effective. The government has proposed to continually increase the costs of landfill disposal and, in the future, provide incentives for landfill diversion, while ending landfill tax exemption for contaminated soil wastes. These potential measures all illustrate an increased desire from government for on-site remediation technologies and a steep reduction in the volumes of waste sent to landfill. The use of on-site remedial technologies will become more prevalent, and so will consideration of their wider environmental sustainability.

Bioremediation enhances the micro-fauna on a site so they break down a contaminant into a less toxic product

Individual firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies also provide an incentive. Clients, investors and regulators now often request the auditing and reporting of a company’s behaviour and its financial liabilities, including environmental and social. The use of sustainable remediation techniques is now seen as a crucial commercial differentiator by the public and investors.

The technologies

Alternatives to landfill disposal have been in existence for several decades. Remedial technologies consume energy, produce atmospheric, solid and liquid-based waste streams, and rarely result in the complete destruction or removal of contaminants from the environment. Often, remediation simply means shifting the contamination elsewhere and the benefit to the site may be negated by the energy expended in doing so.

Bioremediation is one example of a more sustainable technology. The objective of bioremediation is to enhance or augment the existing micro-fauna on a site so that they break down a contaminant into a less toxic and ideally less mobile product. The drawback is that bioremediation can be time-intensive, but is likely to be a favoured approach in the future.

The techniques available will vary greatly from site to site. At the majority of sites, more than one method of remediation may be applicable. The key will be to ensure that, where possible, the most sustainable techniques are used.

Conclusion

Regulatory activity in the area of remediation is likely to increase. Housebuilders and developers can anticipate this by embracing sustainable remediation technologies. They should also be aware of the commercial benefits. By promoting often simple changes to the ways they deliver remediation, developers have a real chance to drive changes in the market.