PBL: “Dutch circular economy employs 420,000 people”

June 05, 2019

The Dutch economy has around 85,000 circular activities that employ around 420,000 people (4% of all jobs). While this shows that circularity has gained a foothold in the Dutch economy, the transition towards a circular economy is not without challenges. These are important insights from the report by PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The report provides an outline of the current state of the circular economy in the Netherlands.

In many countries, governments are looking for ways to change their economy into one that is circular, or to improve the level of resource efficiency. To do so effectively, having an overview of the current state of circular activities in the economy is important. To date, such an overview has been lacking.

PBL constructed this inventory by examining a database of Dutch companies, holding a survey and conducting internet searches using a web crawler.

The inventory shows that many companies and organisations already are contributing to the circular economy—either consciously or unconsciously—amounting to  5% of the current number of firms and 4% of all jobs within the Dutch economy.

More information: PBL.