Top 10 Dutch Municipalities Leading the Raw Materials Transition

Circular Economy

The Netherlands is aiming for a fully circular economy by 2050. Municipalities play a key role in this transition as drivers of local initiatives. But how do individual municipalities measure up? Which municipality has the best waste separation system? And which city is virtually independent of fossil fuels? These are the ten municipalities that are making headway with the raw materials transition. Listed in no particular order, to learn from their circular economy best practices.

A circular economy revolves around the use of raw materials. Materials remain in circulation for as long as possible through reuse, repair, and recycling. The result: less waste, less wastefulness, and more value. Without the raw materials transition, this goal won’t get off the ground. This transition, after all, is the concrete shift from a linear economy to a circular model. Instead of using materials once and then throwing them away, we’re shifting the focus to preserving value and permanently preventing waste.

1. Horst aan de Maas: Champion of Waste Separation

Waste separation is crucial in the transition to a circular economy. It ensures that used materials remain separate and can be reused as raw materials for new products. In this municipality in Limburg, which consists of several towns, residents seem to have turned it into a challenge. As a result, the more than 44,000 residents are on track to achieve a waste separation rate of 85.5% by 2024. Residents generate “only” 26 kilograms of residual waste per person annually. That is many times better than the Dutch average: 179 kilograms per person.

The key to this success is the so-called diftar system. Residents purchase special bags for their residual waste at the local supermarket or other retail locations. So the more residual waste you produce, the more bags you have to buy—and the more you pay. This encourages residents of Horst to be both thrifty and sustainable. Once a month, residual waste in Horst is collected in these bags. Residents of Horst are therefore not allowed to put their waste in just any other trash bag. Other municipalities with a similar diftar system also score well on waste separation. In those municipalities, residents often also have a personal waste card that records when the underground waste container is opened and uses that information to calculate the fee.

2. Haaksbergen: Something Special Is Happening with Wood There

The Circular Awards are presented annually. This year, the municipality of Haaksbergen in Overijssel has a true circular changemaker in its midst. The company Finti won this title this year and transforms fast-growing European softwood into sustainable and circular building materials to replace tropical hardwood. By using wood from certified European forests and circular production processes, the company does not need to rely on tropical hardwood. Incidentally, this award isn’t necessarily due to the municipality of Haaksbergen: sometimes a municipality is simply lucky to have these kinds of pioneers located within its borders. What is, however, the result of the municipality of Haaksbergen’s efforts is the construction of a circular bridge—also made of wood!

3. Rotterdam: Pioneering on the Maas

Rotterdam is one of the European cities eager to pioneer in the field of circular economy. The city on the Maas is one of the signatories of the Circular Cities Declaration, in which more than eighty European cities and regions aim to realize their circular ambitions. One of Rotterdam’s milestones is the opening of an innovative environmental park: HER. HER is a place where discarded materials from residents are given a second life. This is evident not only in the buildings themselves but also in the fact that the facility’s design is largely circular.

4. Amsterdam: Setting a Circular Course

Amsterdam was the very first truly large municipality to investigate what needed to be done in the city to become circular by 2050. The study dates back to 2016. In 2020, a circular economy policy was introduced , making Amsterdam the first municipality in the world to apply the principles of the doughnut economy . The doughnut economy posits that a healthy economy is not driven by growth, but by balance. There are two boundaries that must be respected simultaneously: a social lower boundary (no one should be deprived of basic needs such as food, healthcare, electricity, and housing) and an ecological upper boundary (the Earth must not be depleted beyond its capacity to recover). The space between these two boundaries is where humanity should live: enough for everyone, within the planet’s limits. The city uses the so-called “City Donut” to develop its plans. With every decision, they consider four questions simultaneously: what is the impact on Amsterdammers, on Amsterdam’s natural environment, as well as on people elsewhere in the world and on the global climate?

Amsterdam’s status as a leader is underscored by a research report ,the Sustainable Cities Index by Arcadis, which evaluates global cities on various aspects of sustainability: In the most recent report from 2024, Amsterdam ranks at the top.

5. Venlo: Setting a Good Example

Municipalities are eager to set a good example when it comes to sustainability and the circular economy. In the corridors of city halls, “practice what you preach” is therefore a frequently used phrase. The municipality of Venlo was one of the first in the Netherlands to take a circular approach with its own city hall. It was builtaccording to the Cradle-to-Cradle principles : the building is designed to be dismantled, and materials can be reused elsewhere once the building reaches the end of its life cycle. With the completion of this circular city hall in 2016, Venlo became a global leader in this field.

6. Leiden: Adopting the Circular Procurement Ladder

Meanwhile, an increasing number of municipalities are adopting circular procurement policies. Businesses seeking to do business with a municipality are asked to provide circular products, services, and projects. In Leiden , the “Leidse Ladder”is used for this purpose ; it has since become a well-known term both within City Hall and beyond. This ladder—with prevention at the top, followed by value retention and value creation—is primarily intended for construction projects. The ladder consists of a questionnaire against which all project proposals for projects in the municipality are evaluated. In this way, Leiden is becoming increasingly circular.

7. Kerkrade: Home to a Truly Circular Neighborhood

In the 1960s, neighborhoods full of high-rise buildings sprang up rapidly in Kerkrade. This was done to house all the miners in the area. Mining came to a halt, residents moved away, and the apartment buildings fell into disrepair. But the materials—those could be perfectly reused to build a completely different and circular neighborhood: Superlocal. It is one of the most extensive and uncompromising examples of a circular neighborhood in a municipality in the Netherlands.

8. Zwartewaterland: Waste Prevention

In this municipality in Overijssel, the residents have really got it right: among all Dutch municipalities, the residents of Zwartewaterland produce the least amount of household waste per resident— 323.9 kilograms, as measured in 2024 based on figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS). The Wadden Islands fare much worse, with more than 1,000 kilograms per resident. That, however, is not the islanders’ fault. The waste pile is growing mainly due to the large number of tourists who visit the islands.

9. Amersfoort: Reducing Raw Material Consumption in Construction

The construction sector accounts for 50% of raw material consumption. In Amersfoort, they aim to reduce this consumption: by 2030 at the latest, 55% of what the municipality purchases will be reused or biobased. In its procurement processes, the municipality therefore uses the Environmental Cost Indicator (MKI), which sets environmental performance requirements for materials such as concrete and steel. In Amersfoort, they refer to this as the “MKI wash cycle.” Starting next year, the use of the MKI will be mandatory for all procurement processes.

10. Wageningen: Proportionally the Most Circular Business Activity

Of all municipalities in the Netherlands, Wageningen has, relative to the size of its local business community, the highest proportion of innovative circular economic activity, according to this study. Wageningen likely owes this top ranking primarily to the presence of Wageningen University and all the economic activity surrounding it. This “ecosystem,” as it is called, drives the raw materials transition in this city: the university provides knowledge and research on circular solutions, companies deliberately locate themselves close to this knowledge source, and the municipality supports this through its own policies, with the ambition of becoming fully circular by 2050. Other municipalities in the Netherlands are also working on these kinds of ecosystems, for example by designating business parks specifically for circular economic activities.

Is the Netherlands a leader in the circular economy?

Certainly when it comes to recycling and efficient reuse. Each person recycles about 1,700 kilograms annually . This puts the Netherlands in the top 3 in Europe. On the other hand, we also produce a lot of waste and use a lot of raw materials. We produce more than 500 kilograms of household waste per person each year. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) calculated that everyDutch person uses 87 kilograms of raw materials per day . The Dutch are good at processing waste, but prevention is, of course, better!

Want to become a leader, too?

This list of frontrunners in the raw materials transition shows how municipalities are working to fulfill the national government’s circular economy ambitions to achieve a fully circular economy by 2050 at the latest. This can be achieved, for example, through an ambitious waste management policy, as practiced in Horst aan de Maas and Zwartewaterland. Another approach is to tighten procurement requirements, as done in Amersfoort and Leiden. By taking the lead with circular policies, with Amsterdam as an example. Or by stimulating circular business activities and housing construction, areas in which Wageningen and Kerkrade excel.

As these examples show, there is no single path to circularity. Learn from these municipalities and become a circular leader yourself.

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