2s2: The circular economy and associated risks from food waste

Abstract

The Netherlands has set as policy objective a 50% reduction in use of primary raw materials by 2030, and aims to achieve a complete Circular Economy (CE) in 2050. The Dutch Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) was assigned to monitor all CE-activities in The Netherlands and noted more than 85,000 CE initiatives in 2018, accompanied with 420,000 jobs. CE-activities were divided in the categories: biomass & food, construction, consumption goods, plastics, and the ‘make’ industry. They were further divided into different types of activities or R-strategies. Most of them are shared under recycling (R5) of consumption goods. This shows that CE is not new, but already a significant part of the current day economy. There are only few examples on CE-activities among food or food waste, but they sometimes include many tons of (raw) materials.