Summary

This report provides a decomposition of changes in the use of primary abiotic resources in the Netherlands in the period 1996-2022. The reduction of the use of primary abiotic resources is a key CE policy target in the Netherlands: 50 percent reduction by 2030. We present an index decomposition analysis (IDA) of changes in primary abiotic material use. In this framework, there are four factors underlying changes in the resource consumption: substitution of abiotic for biotic materials, recycling of materials, improving resource efficiency and economic growth. We expect that the first three factors exert a dampening effect on primary abiotic materials consumption, whereas economic growth has an upward impact on this consumption.

In quantification of the IDA, we measured material use at first with domestic material consumption. Substitution takes place if the ratio of abiotic primary materials to the total of primary materials decreases. Recycling increases with a decrease in the ratio of total primary materials to total of both primary and secundary materials. Resource efficiency increases if the ratio of consumption of materials to GDP decreases. Finally, GDP growth reflects change in economic activity.

In the Figure we show our main result for the period 1996-2022. The orange line ('Abiotic resource consumption') shows the development of domestic primary abiotic resource consumption (the change in each year is the change relative to 1996). We can see an overall decline of 15 percent in abiotic resource consumption.

The other four lines reflect the contribution of the four factors to this change in resource consumption. If one would add up the contributions of all four factors, one would get the resulting change in resource consumption. Hence, if, for instance, only economic growth would determine the resource consumption and the other factors would not have exerted their dampening contributions, primary abiotic resource consumption would have increased with the extent of the contribution of economic growth.

The Figure shows that in the 26 years between 1996 and 2022, substitution, recycling and resource efficiency apparently go hand in hand with dematerialisation over time. These factors were mitigating the large upward pressure of economic activity. Increased substitution had a somewhat larger contribution to the decline of resource consumption than increased recycling. The recycling rate is already around 80 percent in the Netherlands. The contribution of substitution might be somewhat overrated as the underlying data include food and feed. But currently the biobased economy is still small, and thereby its impact possibly still to come. The driver that counteracts the effect of economic growth most is resource efficiency. However, this driver probably comprises more than real efficiency alone, including among other things the impact of economic sectoral shifts.

In order to show structural changes in the contribution of the factors, we also split the data into two sub-periods, one before 2009 and one after 2009. Then it becomes more clear that only in more recent years, substitution, recycling and improved efficiency apparently led to a substantial decrease of primary abiotic resource consumption. Then apparently more efforts were made to reduce materials use. In the period before 2009 the upward pressure of economic growth on material consumption was larger than in the period thereafter.

We emphasize that our results have to be interpreted carefully. The decomposition analysis does not present a causal link but can uncover correlations. There are issues with modeling, data, measurement and definitions. But the results shows the potential of a framework of factors underlying changes in primary abiotic resource consumption, and long time series data for an analysis providing insight in structural changes in substitution, recycling, efficiency, and economy over time.