Clean Enough for Whom? Multispecies Justice and the Redefinition of Success in the Green Remediation of Pharmaceutical-Contaminated SoilsClean Enough for Whom? Multispecies Justice and the Redefinition of Success in the Green Remediation of Pharmaceutical

Abstract

Green and sustainable remediation has become the dominant normative frame for soil clean-up, and pharmaceutical residues have become one of its more demanding objects. Yet the criteria by which a contaminated soil is judged successfully remediated remain almost entirely chemical and resource-based: the concentration of the parent compound relative to a threshold, achieved at an acceptable footprint of energy, emissions, water and waste. This article argues that these criteria are not merely incomplete but systematically silent about the organisms on which the outcome most directly falls, and that the silence is produced rather than accidental. Three displacements structure the argument. First, chemical removal and ecological recovery are separable outcomes: mineralisation, transformation, sequestration as non-extractable residue and translocation into biomass are all recorded as removal, though only the first constitutes detoxification. Second, the boundaries of environmental justice are examined and found to exclude soil biota by default rather than by argument, an exclusion that recognition-based and critical accounts of justice give reason to revisit. Third, the predicate "green" is shown to be indexed to a human scale of accounting, such that interventions reducing energy use may nonetheless simplify the communities they act upon. Heidegger's analysis of technology as a mode of revealing supplies an account of why the metric gap persists under repeated correction: the removal-rate criterion expresses a prior disclosure of soil as standing-reserve. Against this, a Multispecies Remediation Justice framework is proposed, organised around distributive, recognition, procedural and restorative dimensions and operationalised as a four-tier reporting ladder. Two further cases — Ephemeroptera distribution mapping and energy-saving retrofit of traditional kilns — establish that the tension recurs across monitoring and production technologies. The article closes with amendments to green remediation certification, impact assessment and monitoring disclosure.