Land is a premium resource and in Britain we need to reclaim as much as possible as the population grows. With this is in mind successive governments and public services have sought to reclaim this land. How to deal with contaminated land falls to Contaminated Land Remediation specialists. What factors have brought the situation in the first place?
It is easy to list all the ways that land becomes contaminated. This country was at one time covered in industry from the Primary and Secondary sectors. These are areas such as mining and quarrying like coal and aggregates and manufacturing or the creation of raw materials such as steel. All of these industries belched out smoke and heavy metals like lead into the soil and water for centuries.
The other main contaminant is from fertilizers, such as nitrate, that is used by the factory farming agricultural industry. Also, we ourselves, contribute via the burying of non recycling material in municipal tips. Plastics such as cellophane do not rot down but linger releasing chemicals into the soil.
Now that we work in a more tertiary and quaternary sector (financial services, retail and care work and hospitality) the demand for clean land for housing and leisure is much greater. The work of the remediation teams is far from over.