Forum on clean-up power of plants

Leading local and international experts gathered at the University of Melbourne recently for a seminar and workshop on the use of plants to revegetate and clean up contaminated land

The program, sponsored by the Faculty of Science, attracted about 60 participants from environmental and waste management industries, mining companies, universities and government.
Key speakers, including two leading US experts and the University of Melbourne’s Professor Alan Baker (Botany), spoke on the potential of plants to economically and effectively clean up contaminated sites – a technology known as phytoremediation.
“The issues and science surrounding phytoremediation are relatively well understood in Europe and countries such as the USA, but its potential is largely unrecognized and untapped in Australia,” says Professor Baker, an Australian pioneer in the field.
“The workshop generated immense interest in the technology and we have since been approached by landfill operators and local government to work on ways to set up trials for a wide range of contaminated environments,” he says.
           By Jason Major

Phytoremediation uses carefully selected plants, including native herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees, to remove or degrade toxic compounds such as heavy metals, pesticides residues, organic and inorganic compounds from landfill, mining and other industrial sites. Such plants can act as biopumps to suck up these compounds and store or degrade them in their tissues.

we need to work out which plants will work best under our unique… conditions


“Phytoremediation is only part of the solution to these growing problems, but one that is long-term and with the potential to provide economical spin-offs such as harvesting the phytoremediation crops for timber, energy, oils or other valuable products,” says Professor Baker.

 “While the technology has already proven itself in countries such as the USA, Australian conditions are very different and we need to work out which plants will work best under our unique environmental conditions,” he says.
Professor Baker is working closely with Dr Sam Yuen (Civil and Environmental Engineering) who was also involved in the seminar and workshop.
Dr Yuen is researching alternative materials and designs for landfill and mine waste caps, which are usually made of various earths and act as a seal to prevent water leaching through to the waste and contaminants leaching out.
The task is to design a cap that uses largely local resources, but can also support plant growth. Such plants must be able to thrive on the cap and also cope with the Australian environmental conditions.
PhytoLink (Australia) Pty Ltd and the Waste Management Association of Australia brought the international experts to Australia with funding assistance from the University of Melbourne and other research, industry and government organizations.