Sustainability and Remediation - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 929

productivity, energy productivity, resource input per unit of end-user service. These
indices may inform aspects of a sustainability appraisal, but do not substitute for
sustainability appraisal.

20.3.4.14 Life Cycle Assessment

Life Cycle Assessment is a tool to evaluate the environmental consequences of prod-
ucts or services from cradle-to-grave, and their use (Danish Topic Centre on Waste
and Resources 2006 ; Wrisberg et al. 2002 ). In the context of contaminated sites,
such a function might be the remediation of a contaminated site (Shakweer and
Nathanail 2003 ). The main features of LCA are as follows:

• LCA follows a cradle-to-grave approach : all processes connected with the func-

tion, from the extraction of resources until the final disposal of waste, are
considered.

• LCA is comprehensive with respect to the environmental interventions and envi-

ronmental issues considered. In principle , 26 all environmental issues connected
with the function are specified as resulting from extractions, emissions and other
physical interventions like changes in land use.

• LCA may provide quantitative or qualitative results. With quantitative results it

is easier to identify problematical parts of the life-cycle and to specify what can
be gained by alternative ways to fulfil the function.

LCA reports may also be accompanied by assessments of the economic value
of any impacts reported (e.g. “human toxicity” and may include impacts that could
be considered social rather than environmental, such as injuries at work (Koneczny
and Pennington 2007 ). LCA based approaches have been used in several decision
support tools for remediation assessment (Bardos et al. 2002 ). Perhaps the most
widely used of these tools is the Dutch REC system. REC was developed in the
early 1990s (NOBIS 1995a , b ). The REC approach derives quantitative criteria
for “risk reduction” (R), “environmental merit” (E) and “cost” (C). The “environ-
mental merit” assessment is based on a Life Cycle Assessment related approach.
The REC tool provides three indices for assessing projects: R - an index of Risk
Management performance; E an index of environmental merit based on life cycle
techniques considering: and C an index of direct costs. The environmental merit
index considers:

• improvement of soil quality;

• improvement of groundwater quality;

• loss of volume of soil;

26 Our emphasis : in most applications LCA is subject to a number of simplifying assumptions in
order to make the analysis practically achievable. These simplifications can introduce a degree of
subjectivity into the analyses.