The discovery to treat contaminated soil with ochre from mine water has gained the Coal Authority the awards for ‘Best Re-use of Materials’ and ‘Best Infrastructure Project at Environment Analyst’s Brownfield’

This process has been achieved by re-using the hazardous material found in mine water and has been estimated to already have saved £2 million. Other mining sites hope to repeat this process where the disposal of the hazardous material is not viable.

This is very good news for the coal industry as they show innovative ways to be more sustainable by cutting their emissions and reducing landfills with the re-use of material. They have already been operating 82 treatment schemes across their sites in the UK which clean 122 billion liters of water which means less material entering water sources.

Although coal mining is not a green source of energy, this projects has shown that there are innovative ways for fossil fuels to be more sustainable my finding ways to re-use the byproducts they produce.

More information available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/awards-success-for-coal-authority-and-partners