Donne Gerlich
Lotte van Oevelen
Eelkje Pries
Kefei Yan
Anne van den Berg
Tutors: Caroline Newton, Lei Qu and Alexander Wandl
Key words: circular economy, South Holland, agri-food, construction, symbiosis
The province of South Holland has many important stakeholders and drivers that impact the economy of the whole of the Netherlands. This, together with the increasing global need for circularity, is why the province
has to take steps towards a circular economy in the near future. To address this task, this project has chosen to look into the agri-food sector, because of their high economic significance in South Holland, and the construction sector, because of the current and future high demand for housing. Both sectors also create large residual material flows. Minimizing the high amount of waste from both sectors is essential in order to reach a circular region. The existing approach to creating a circular economy is too often look at individual sectors and their material flows. This is logical, but adverse with the idea of circularity, where all chains are closed. We believe that problems should not be solved within ‘their’ sector. Our vision to solve this problem is as follows: “In 2050, the material flow of the agri-food sector will be closed. All before-known waste is now used as a resource for the construction sector. Because of this, the waste of the construction sector is reduced. Because of the collaborative sector chains, they could now be seen as one interlinked sector. The South Holland agriculture sector is now a leading example for a symbiotic and self-sufficient interlinked chain.” Our ambition is to create a new movement within the circular economy. Bottom-up initiatives show that it is
possible to create interlinked sectors. This project suggests a pilot in upscaling this idea, and proves that this is possible and has great beneficial outcomes. The pilot focuses on using agri-food residual flows as a resource
for the construction industry of South Holland, but can be an inspiration to interlinking other sectors. To approach the interlinking of sectors, we envision a few strategies. We will be bringing the pieces of different
policies together, use education and knowledge as glue between the sectors, and use transport and infrastructure to support the connection. Spatially, this results in four types of transition zones, a new living environment
where the two sectors come together, also impacting the surrounding areas. This also impacts citizens from a socio-economic perspective, because more cross-sector jobs will be created and competition between businesses will be stimulated, which drives them to become more circular.