What makes Clean Earth unique is our true turnkey solutions for cost-effective treatment and management of waste materials and connecting them with real-world markets for recycling and beneficial reuse. By marrying the need for disposal alternatives with a parallel need for suitable construction materials and the focused drive for a sustainable future, all under complex regulatory environments, Clean Earth has effectively created a new sustainable paradigm for the industries we serve.
Using a combination of the known properties of the byproducts and wastes generated by our clients, in conjunction with market demand knowledge and research local to the sources of generation, Clean Earth identifies potential target markets for direct reuse of the materials themselves, or develops treatment processes to dispose of or transform and render the materials suitable for recycling uses.
In many cases for our soil and dredged material, Clean Earth partners with developers and land owners who have a large need for fill materials to assist in the permitting of their sites and in the installation of engineering and institutional controls necessary to create a project that will use large quantities of our products and materials over a multi-year period.
By creating the markets for our customers, Clean Earth helps to provide reliable and economical solutions to our clients' disposal needs - and we do this in a greener, more sustainable and environmentally conscious manner - by avoiding disposal altogether.
Through these processes and services, Clean Earth has become instrumental in the reclamation of brownfield sites and abandoned mine lands along with the closure of numerous landfills that have been redeveloped into golf courses, public parks and commercial sites.
Clean Earth Beneficial Use Options
Outside of our portfolio of soil treatment facilities, Clean Earth offers a number of “Beneficial Use” (BU) options for soil recycling. These BU sites can be brownfield sites or landfills undergoing closure and redevelopment. Soil is imported to these sites for use as fill and grading material, in conjunction with its state agency approved remedial action work plans or landfill closure plans. Each site offers its own unique acceptance criteria for imported fill and is overseen by a third-party engineer responsible for review of each potential source of fill. Upon review of data and an assessment that soil is suitable for a BU site, Clean Earth will match the export material with appropriate BU sites. The major driver that affects whether soil is sent to the traditional soil treatment facility for recycling vs. BU sites, is the chemical and physical properties of the soil to be removed. In New Jersey, BU soil will normally fall into a category of residential or non-residential fill, relative to applicable state clean-up criteria. BU soil does not require treatment and is therefore taken directly from the source to the chosen BU site. Aside from meeting the permit acceptance criteria, BU soil must also meet geotechnical specification for compaction or slope stability. BU options offer the lowest cost of disposal option because the material is directly placed into the site and does not receive additional treatment. Clean Earth’s Beneficial Use options offer another avenue for our clients to save money, while utilizing a secure, state permitted and approved disposal option.
Types of Beneficial Reuse Material
Clean Earth provides innovative beneficial reuse solutions for an array of specialty waste material such as dredged material, CCPs, and drill and pipeline cuttings. Clean Earth and the clients we serve seek to avoid landfills and utilize recycling and beneficial reuse applications for their waste materials.
Dredged Material
Clean Earth provides innovative dredged material processing and beneficial reuse solutions for environmentally impacted dredged material generated through the process of channel maintenance and deepening projects. This dredged material, an aggregate of sediment accumulated at the bottom of a waterway, is removed to provide fifty-foot deep channels required for large ocean-going shipping vessels. Dredged material is processed through various means to meet specifications for upland beneficial reuse such as landfill capping and cover, mine reclamation, and brownfield redevelopment.
Coal Combustion Products (CCPs)
Clean Earth’s unique experience as a “market maker” for beneficial use of our entire spectrum of environmentally safe recycled products allows us to quickly and consistently find beneficial uses for CCPs.
Whether it’s a one-time coal ash impoundment clean out and closure or a 20-year ash production requirements contract, Clean Earth possesses unparalleled experience in the use of pre-treatment, handling and logistics necessary to place your combustion products into sound markets and beneficial reuses. Our engineered material can be recycled or beneficially reused for road base, brownfield reclamation, and mine reclamation.
Clean Earth's full compass of services for CCP management includes the research, technology, and strategy for go to market. For every CCP Management project we handle, we take into consideration that there is an early review needed focused from all environmental views.
Drill & Pipeline Cuttings
Clean Earth developed the first PADEP permitted technology that allows oil and gas companies to recycle or beneficially reuse drill and pipeline cuttings derived from oil and gas exploration.
Overall the beneficial reuse of drill cuttings at brownfield/Act 2 sites provides direct environmental benefits such as:
The diversion of drill cutting wastes from landfill disposal resulting in reduced utilization of vital landfill space which allows the resulting air space to be used for other residual wastes and municipal wastes that are not amenable to beneficial reuse.
The use of processed drill cuttings as an effective engineered cap at sites that are already environmentally impacted offsets the use of other natural resources as capping material at these contaminated sites. This minimizes the potential for the media transfer of pollutants to “clean” or un-impacted sources of soil/fill.
Helping to restore a property to useful services, resulting in potential increases in jobs and the preservation of green field space is a supplemental benefit that provides measureable enhancements both environmentally and socioeconomically.