Nature Cure: Bioremediation As a Sustainable Solution for Polluted Sites

Abstract

Polluting is usually cheap and easy; cleaning up is often expensive and difficult. The traditional way to deal with contaminated soil or sediment is to dig it out and dispose of it elsewhere. Contaminated water is usually pumped out, treated, and released back. Results are often unsatisfactory—studies show that only a small fraction of sites get acceptably cleaned up and the environment is rarely restored. Further, these measures are expensive: using them to restore all contaminated sites in the US could easily cost more than a trillion dollars.