Sustainable environmental geotechnics practices for a green economy

TLDR

The post‑COVID‑19 economic revival highlights the need for environmental geotechnics to adopt a green, circular economy, addressing persistent landfill use in low‑ and middle‑income countries and exploring thermo‑active geostructures that can also generate renewable energy. The paper seeks to guide sustainability efforts by focusing on key thematic areas, including waste reuse and remediation of contaminated sites, to advance green geotechnics. It proposes integrating construction and demolition waste, industrial by‑products, and marine sediments into the production cycle, reusing existing foundations, and applying advanced, multi‑dimensional ground‑improvement techniques for soft and weak soils.

Abstract

The revitalisation of the global economy after the Covid-19 era presents environmental geotechnics with the opportunity to reinforce the need for a change in paradigm towards a green, circular economy and to promote aggressively the use and development of sustainable technologies and management practices. This paper aims to assist in this effort by concentrating on several thematic areas where sustainability solutions and future improvements are sought. These include the re-entry of construction and demolition of wastes, excavated materials, industrial wastes and marine sediments into the production cycle and the reuse of existing foundations. Despite the recent trend in advanced countries towards recycling and waste-to-energy thermal treatment, landfills still constitute the most common municipal solid waste management practice, especially in low-and-middle-income countries, and technological solutions to improve their environmental footprint are hereby presented. At the same time, remediation solutions are required to address the multitude of contaminated sites worldwide. Advanced developments that incorporate environmental, economic and social dimensions are expounded by the authors, together with sustainable ground improvement solutions for infrastructure projects conducted in soft and weak soils. The topic of thermo-active geostructures concludes this paper, where, apart from their infrastructure utility, these structures have the potential to contribute to the renewable energy source.