The scale of land-contamination problems, and of the responses to them, makes achieving sustainability in contaminated land remediation an important objective. The Sustainable Remediation Forum in the UK (SuRF-UK) was established in 2007 to support more sustainable remediation practice in the UK. The current international interest in 'sustainable remediation' has achieved a fairly rapid consensus on concepts, descriptions and definitions for sustainable remediation, which are now being incorporated into an ISO standard. However the sustainability assessment methods being used remain diverse with a range of (mainly) semi-quantitative and quantitative approaches and tools developed, or in development. Sustainability assessment is site specific and subjective. It depends on the inclusion of a wide range of considerations across different stakeholder perspectives. Taking a tiered approach to sustainability assessment offers important advantages, starting from a qualitative assessment and moving through to semi-quantitative and quantitative assessments on an 'as required' basis only. It is also clear that there are a number of 'easy wins' that could improve performance against sustainability criteria right across the site management process. SuRF-UK has provided a checklist of 'sustainable management practices' that describes some of these. This paper provides the rationale for, and an outline of, and recently published SuRF-UK guidance on preparing for and framing sustainability assessments; carrying out qualitative sustainability assessment; and simple good management practices to improve sustainability across contaminated land management activities.

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In the past decade, management of historically contaminated land has largely been based on prevention of unacceptable risks to human health and the environment, to ensure a site is "fit for use."More recently, interest has been shown in including sustainability as a decision-making criterion.Sustainability concerns include the environmental, social, and economic consequences of risk management activities themselves, and also the opportunities for wider benefit beyond achievement of risk-reduction goals alone. In the United Kingdom, this interest has led to the formation of a multistakeholder initiative, the UK Sustainable Remediation Forum (SuRF-UK). This article presents a framework for assessing "sustainable remediation"; describes how it links with the relevant regulatory guidance; reviews the factors considered in sustainability; and looks at the appraisal tools that have been applied to evaluate the wider benefits and impacts of land remediation. The article also describes how the framework relates to recent international developments, including emerging European Union legislation and policy. A large part of this debate has taken place in the "grey" literature, which we review. It is proposed that a practical approach to integrating sustainability within risk-based contaminated land management offers the possibility of a substantial step forward for the remediation industry, and a new opportunity for international consensus. O

The increasing need for biomass for energy and feedstocks, along with the need to divert organic methane generating wastes from landfills, may provide the economic leverage necessary to return this type of marginal land to functional and economic use and is strongly supported by policy at the European Union (EU) level. The use of land to produce biomass for energy production or feedstocks for manufacturing processes (such as plastics and biofuels) has, however, become increasingly contentious, with a number of environmental, economic, and social concerns raised.The REJUVENATE project has developed a decision support framework to help land managers and other decision makers identify potential concerns related to sustainability and what types of biomass reuse for marginal land might be possible, given their particular circumstances. The decision-making framework takes a holistic approach to decision making rather than viewing biomass production simply as an adjunct of a planned phytoremediation project. The framework is serviceable in Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. These countries have substantive differences in their land and biomass reuse circumstances. However, all can make use of the set of common principles of crop, site, value, and project risk management set out by REJUVENATE. This implies that the framework should have wider applicability across the EU. This article introduces the decision support framework. O c 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. INTRODUCTIONThe use of land to produce biomass for energy production or feedstocks for manufacturing processes (such as plastics and biofuels) has become increasingly contentious, with a number of environmental, economic, and social concerns raised. Across Europe there are areas of land that have been damaged by past use. These include brownfields 1 and land affected by contamination. In a large number of situations this land is derelict or underutilized because its restoration is uneconomic or unsustainable using conventional methods. This economically stalled land is described as "marginal land" within this article.There are estimated to be close to one million potential brownfield sites across the European Union (EU; Oliver et al., 2005). The European Environment Agency (EEA) has also collated information regarding the quantity of land contaminated by point sources in Europe. In August 2007, the EEA (EEA, 2007) would require cleanup, with potentially polluting activities having occurred at nearly 3 million sites, and the number of sites was projected to increase. The EEA's report concluded that "although considerable efforts have been made already, it will take decades to clean up a legacy of contamination.""Although considerable efforts have been made already, it will take decades to clean up a legacy of contamination."The extent of diffuse contamination is less well known as evidenced by the European Commission's (EC's) 2010 report, European Environment State and Outlook on Soil (EC, 2010), but appears to be a substantial problem. For example, across tw...

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