1. Introduction

Circular economy (CE) is an important policy theme in the pursuit of reduction of non-renewable natural resources use and the amount of waste leaving the economy. Policy makers utilize statistical data on physical stocks and flows of different types of materials, and indicators such as Domestic Material Consumption (DMC), Circular Material Use Rate (CMUR), and Resource Productivity. There is a growing need for more detailed information, analyses, and visualisations in order to unlock and disseminate the wealth of statistical information.

This report provides a decomposition of changes in the use of primary abiotic resources in the Netherlands over a long time period. The reduction of the use of primary abiotic resources is a key CE policy target in the Netherlands: 50 percent reduction by 2030. The analysis is an update of decomposition results reported by Delahaye et al. (2020, Section 3). ¹⁾ The update was made for the benefit of the ICER (Integral Circular Economy Report) publication in February 2025 by PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. ²⁾

In the next sections, we present the index decomposition analysis (IDA) of primary abiotic resources use in the Netherlands. First, we describe the IDA model with drivers behind the use of primary abiotic resources, measured as DMC (Section 2). Data to quantify the drivers come from official statistical sources of Statistics Netherlands, allowing statistical agencies in other EU countries to apply the same methodology (Section 3). In Section 4, we present the results for the long time period 1996-2022, and also describe developments in two subperiods before and after 2009. Annex A provides results of a variant of measuring resource use, namely Domestic Material Input (DMI). The report concludes in Section 5 on the results of the IDA with discussion and recommendations.