Sustainability and Remediation - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 916

20.3.2 Using Sustainability for Technology Promotion
and for Corporate Reporting
20.3.2.1 Promotion of Remediation Technologies
An attractive proposition for some technology vendors and service providers might
be to have some kind of a benchmark which shows that their technology is more
sustainable than someone elses, analogous to how household appliances are now
commonly sold with energy ratings. There is no fundamental measure of sustain-
ability that can be applied to show that a particular remediation technology will be
better from a sustainable development perspective whatever the remediation project
context. However, there may be aspects of a particular technology which may be
regarded as beneficial, particularly from the point of view of controlling environ-
mental impacts. These may be labelled “Key Performance Indicators” by those keen
to promote them. There is also much interest in the use of life cycle based tools to
provide generic measures of environmental technology performance, particularly in
the waste and recycling management sector (Bender et al. 1998 ; Dalemo and Oostra
1997 , Environment Agency 2009 ; Wittmaier et al. 2009 ). Current policies related
to climate change also create an interest in the carbon intensity or energy efficiency
of particular remediation approaches (EURODEMO 2007b ). Caution is needed in
applying Life Cycle Assessments in a generic way, rather than in a comparative
way (Environment Agency 2000 ; Finnveden 2000 ). The benefits being promoted
will undoubtedly be selective, because many aspects of sustainability may not be
readily quantifiable. Furthermore, sustainability is a function of a whole project and
how a technology is used, as illustrated in the case studies below. For example, a
particular remediation technology may contribute to a project that is sustainable in
an overall sense, even if, for example, its carbon intensity is greater than that of a
competing technology. Hence, while it is perfectly legitimate to promote particular
environmental advantages of a remediation technology, the decision on using that
technology for a particular project has to be based on a site specific sustainability
appraisal if “sustainable remediation” is to be achieved. Nonetheless, technology
vendors able to provide context-relevant data on sustainability impacts (across all
three elements of sustainability) to facilitate sustainability appraisal may be better
able to compete in a sustainable remediation market.
20.3.2.2 Linkage to Corporate Reporting
The broad ways in which corporate reporting on sustainable remediation may be car-
ried out include finding some means of overarching sustainability appraisal across
all projects, and demonstrating that individual projects have met their specific sus-
tainability criteria based on the consensus across the stakeholders involved in the
decision making process. The dominant sustainable remediation function is ensur-
ing that sustainable projects are carried out, and this decision making will be project
specific. This makes the use of an all encompassing set of corporate sustainability
metrics across all projects difficult to achieve. Furthermore, corporate sustainability