Green and Sustainable Remediation

When decision makers consider environmental, social, and economic factors throughout a site remediation, they can lessen negative effects of the cleanup, protect human health and the environment—and still meet regulatory objectives. The consideration of these factors is termed “Green and Sustainable Remediation” (GSR). GSR is defined as the site-specific use of products, processes, technologies, and procedures that mitigate contaminant risk to receptors while balancing community goals, economic impacts, and net environmental effects. GSR has emerged as a beneficial approach that optimizes all phases of site remediation, from site investigation to project closeout.

The ITRC Green and Sustainable Remediation (GSR) team facilitates discussion in the regulatory community regarding sustainable and green remediation. Many state and federal agencies are assessing and applying GSR in their regulatory programs. The ITRC GSR project serves as an important resource for those agencies currently initiating GSR programs and currently offers two guidance documents:

This guidance describes current approaches to green and sustainable efforts and provides regulators and other environmental practitioners with a clearly defined path for implementing GSR.