Zhang Yang

    nicolezyyy@163.com

    BUILDING a circular economy is high on the environmental policy agenda in the Netherlands, as the country initiated a government-wide program entitled “A Circular Economy in the Netherlands by 2050” in 2016, which shows the country’s ambition of transitioning from a linear to a circular economy.

    Many companies and organizations in the Netherlands are also exploring new ways to make contributions to the circular economy, which encourages people to use raw materials, products and services in more efficient and intelligent ways.

    Black Bear, a Dutch company founded in 2010, specializes in harvesting and upcycling carbon blacks from used up tires.

    Clara Song, spokesperson of the company, said carbon blacks are usually produced from fossil fuels, by partially burning crude oil under controlled conditions. 

    “It requires around 2.5 liters of crude oil to produce 1 kilogram of carbon blacks. It’s a highly polluting process,” she said.

    According to Song, Black Bear adopts a circular economy approach, which not only massively reduces carbon emissions but also helps solve a waste-management problem, as carbon blacks recovered from waste tires can be reused in producing new tires, rubber products, plastics, paint and ink.

    Song said the company is able to recover high-quality carbon blacks that are equal and sometimes better than virgin carbon blacks in terms of technical performance.

    Waste Transformers, founded in 2012 in Westerpark in Amsterdam, is another company that contributes innovations to the circular economy.

    The company’s waste-disposal unit can convert 600 kilograms of organic waste per day, turning it into green energy, water and fertilizer.

    The company’s founder, Lara van Druten, said the company collects organic waste from 10 restaurants, two theaters and a micro-brewery in Westerpark and process the waste locally at its unit to save on transport costs.

    According to her, the company has launched the “Business in a Box” program to provide entrepreneurs anywhere in the world with all the support and tools they need to run their own Waste Transformer units as a business. The entrepreneurs can either buy or rent the units from the company.

    Restaurants can also buy their own units to dispose of kitchen waste and generate electricity in return. Druten said the electricity generated by a unit is enough to keep it running and people can make use of the extra electricity themselves or by selling it to others.

    Starting in January, China has enacted a plastic waste import ban in an attempt to cut down on the millions of tons of plastic waste from other countries.

    Joan Prummel, strategic advisor of circular procurement at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, said the Netherlands used to export plastic waste to China.

    “Personally I think it’s a great decision made by China to stop importing waste from other countries. You gave us a problem, which we now have to solve. We have to find a solution for it,” said Prummel, adding that the ban has stimulated the Netherlands to find a better way to dispose of its plastic waste and develop its circular economy.

    Henk Snoeken, deputy director of international affairs at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, said the Netherlands has targeted halving the use of virgin raw materials by 2030 and building a 100-percent circular economy by 2050.