NICOLE’s vision for this workshop is to help find a greater understanding of what sustainable remediation 
is and can achieve.  The workshop explored what might be meant by “sustainable remediation”; linked 
this concept to frameworks for contaminated land management, and considered how sustainability 
can be included in contaminated land management decisions across Europe.  The workshop found as 
follows.  Sustainable remediation needs “sustainable legislation”. This means not only the content 
of the legislation, but the way it relates to other relevant legislation, as well as principles and 
practices of working.  NICOLE will continue to press for joined up thinking at EU and Member State 
level to provide a consistent approach to soil and waste related regulations as they affect contaminated 
sites. 
Offering a prescriptive and dogmatic view on tools and indicators is scarcely likely to assist 
a consensus between these different constituencies.  NICOLE’s approach will be to provide a road 
map about the process of using sustainability in contaminated land decision making and checklists 
to provide technical support to decision-makers, allowing them to examine suggestions of possible 
sustainability criteria or factors (indicators) and available tools and techniques in the literature 
or on the market along with some assessment of their utility. 
NICOLE is collaborating closely with SURF and SURF-UK and developing links with the Common Forum 
to try and develop an international consensus of what sustainable remediation is and how it should 
be achieved.