Soil remediation

SUEZ deconstructs industrial sites at the end of their life and we decontaminate soil and groundwater. The aim is always to achieve optimum levels of recovery and re-use, while safeguarding health and safety. SUEZ has the comprehensive expertise required to ensure site safety, regulatory compliance and recovery of resources.

Planning and preparing sites
The dismantling and decontamination process requires careful planning. We follow a rigorous procedure, which includes these key steps:
Diagnostic stage

From an audit of the risks and scoping the project to defining the human and technical resources to be mobilised and a risk management plan.


Hazardous waste removal

We identify, sort and prepare the wastes for transportation.


Disposal

We dispatch the waste streams to the most appropriate recovery and treatment facilities.


Site shutdown

We manage or advise on the disassembly of equipment and buildings.

Deconstruction and decontamination has many facets, and can be critical for development projects as well as the environment. We enable you to optimise how the work is managed and executed by:

  • Basing the deconstruction phase in a global project strategy.
  • Ensuring the total safety of the work site and its legal compliance.
  • Preparing work sites with a thorough understanding of the challenges posed, including a clearly defined strategy, thorough site preparation, and all necessary technical diagnostics.
  • Leading and optimising activities, such as site organisation, legal and administrative management, and project management.
  • Analysing and managing the impact of the work on the site’s environment.

We guarantee extremely strict monitoring of health and safety conditions on our remediation sites. This will involve:

  • One-time or continuous testing of the working atmosphere.
  • Supply of protective equipment.
  • Individual monitoring of each member of staff working on-site.
  • Analysis, sorting and the possibility to choose channels for reusing resources.
  • Complete traceability of all wastes produced on the site.

Re-use and recovery
Efficient and responsible site deconstruction and decontamination involves recycling and recovering as much waste as possible as new resources. This, in turn, requires real-time monitoring of waste streams and expert management of hazardous waste.
We use digital waste tracking systems to:
  • Monitor the waste streams in real time (collection, treatment, recovery).
  • View and analyse this data, manage invoicing, and for regulatory and administrative monitoring.


Our sophisticated cleaning methods limit risks to health, safety and the environment, while maximising the recovery and quality of materials for re-use in industrial processes.

Our systems are geared to:

  • Managing complex waste composed of several materials and containing hazardous products, such as gas, adhesives, solvents and paint.
  • Ensuring compliance with recycling requirements set in regulations: 50-80% for WEEE and 95 % for end-of-life vehicles.
  • Recovering metals and glass for processing through our established recycling services.
  • Maximising the value of secondary raw materials through our in-house trading operations.
  • Optimising your logistics by grouping delivery of materials and waste collection.
  • Utilising alternatives to road transportation, where feasible, such as river or rail transport.

Hazardous wastes must be managed separately. We provide the logistics for treating these wastes, enabling you to:

  • Safeguard operations and site safety.
  • Reduce the environmental impact by optimising sorting, storage and transportation of hazardous waste.
  • Benefit from waste traceability at the best price.
  • Select the solution best suited to each type of waste.








Recovering hazardous waste

Given the right treatment, hazardous waste too can yield secondary raw materials or energy. The advantages of our approach include:

  • Reducing your ecological footprint.
  • Preserving and optimising resources.
  • Enhancing the value of your brand through this commitment to the circular economy.
  • Guaranteed safety and legal compliance.

PCB decontamination

The Stockholm Convention adopted in EU legislation calls for the elimination of PCBs by 2025. Our comprehensive service:

  • Ensures the safe recycling and disposal of transformers containing PCBs.
  • Eliminates potential environmental pollution through a secure recovery process for equipment contaminated with PCBs.
  • Provides controlled disposal of end-of-life transformers in strict compliance with the legislation.

Transforming waste into alternative fuels

Where recycling or re-use are not feasible, we can recover value by using waste as an alternative fuel. For example co-incineration of liquid and solid oily wastes helps replace fossil fuels.

 

This also has the advantage of reducing energy costs, while offering a more sustainable disposal option for this waste.

Decontaminating soils
The decontamination work can be carried out on site or the soils can be excavated for treatment elsewhere. Our experts and the patented processes they use can, in most cases, generate a second life for this natural resource – as well as regenerating the site itself for new use, such as housing development.

A range of decontamination techniques

Our decontamination solutions, designed to promote recovery and cost benefits through material re-use, cater for various types of contamination and the configuration of sites. They include:

In-situ decontamination

  • Treating soil without excavation – standard procedures include venting, bioventing, etc.

Ex-situ decontamination

  • Treating excavated soil on site – bioremediation, soil washing, thermal desorption, stabilisation, etc.

Recovering polluted soil

As with other resources in waste, we have developed techniques to put soils to good use. Features of this process include:

  • Optimised transportation, treatment and costs.
  • Maximum soil recovery and re-use.
  • Pretreatments and treatments – mechanical equipment with air filtration, bioremediation.
  • Recovery of aggregates – from road sweepings – in the form of alternative products for construction work, such as precast concrete.
  • Recovery of inert or natural occurring soil as capping and restoration material in our landfill sites.

Off-site decontamination

  • Treating materials in specialised facilities.

Decontaminating groundwater

SUEZ is at the forefront of the latest techniques developed to ensure effective remediation, whilst respecting the natural environment.

SUEZ uses its own dedicated laboratory to test naturally-present compounds and the characteristics of the contamination, to ensure the most efficient restoration results.

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