Sustainable Remediation is a term adopted internationally and encompasses sustainable approaches, as described by the Brundtland Report, to the investigation, assessment and management (including institutional controls) of potentially contaminated land

Contaminated land

Land that is contaminated contains substances in or under the land that are actually or potentially hazardous to health or the environment. Areas with a long history of industrial production will have many sites which may be affected by their former uses such as mining, industry, chemical and oil...

 and groundwater

Groundwater

Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock...

.

The process of identifying Sustainable Remediation is defined by The UK Sustainable remediation Forum (SuRF-UK) as “the practice of demonstrating, in terms of environmental

Natural environment

The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....

, economic and social

Social

The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...

indicators, that the benefit of undertaking remediation is greater than its impact, and that the optimum remediation solution is selected through the use of a balanced decision-making process.”