Advantages of Phtyoremediation
Phytoremediation has received
considerable attention because it offers a cheaper, easier and environmentally
sound pollution-remediation option. Seeding a field of plants and harvesting
them to extract the pollutant is much cheaper than removing huge
amounts of contaminated soil. In some cases, the extracted biomass can
be incinerated and the metals recovered and sold for profit (Salt, et al.
1998). In cases where it is not economically feasible to recycle the metals,
it is still cheaper to dispose of a small amount of contaminated plant
mass in a hazardous waste landfill rather than acres of topsoil. Phytroremediation
is non-invasive and does not require heavy machinery to excavate soil.
For this reason it is aesthetically more pleasing. Most importantly, it
is a real solution to cleaning up a substrate. Excavating and transferring
contaminated soil or water to a hazardous waste storage facility is simply
moving the problem without cleaning anything, whereas phytoredmediation
is real remediation of the substrate.
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