“Hey Bas, those roundabout elements, can a truck over it?”
Bas van der Veer gives a tour of the raw material depot of the municipality of Utrecht, when a visitor drops his eye on the large concrete plates stacked on top of each other in the semi -open shed. “Let’s talk about that further!” He calls back enthusiastically.
As a raw material broker, Van der Veer keeps in which material comes to the Lage Weide industrial estate in the Depot of Industrial site and goes out again. He knows where every old street vowel, trash can or playground has ever been in the municipality. He points to a pile of slates: “Are fans of FC Utrecht here? These tiles pulled out supporters at the riots last year, on which the municipality removed them from the stadium. They are very expensive, so we can save a lot of money.”
Until about ten years ago it was customary for the municipality to replace everything with new material when redesigning a street or park. The contractor received the old material and was allowed to do what he wanted. Now reuse is the norm, says Utrecht alderman Susanne Schilderman (Circular Economy, D66). But because there can be a lot of time between the construction of one street and the other, the municipality needed a site for temporary storage.
Utrecht is not unique in this. A growing number of municipalities opens similar depots, where (construction) materials from the public space are stored to be re -used. Since last fall, for example, Haarlem has a ‘raw material hub’, Apeldoorn has a ‘circular yard’ and Almere can set up an area of around 5,000 square meters after the summer, a spokesperson says.
The development is related to the cabinet objective to make the Dutch economy completely circular in 2050, in which all residual materials of waste and building materials are reused. In 2030 that must be 50 percent, but the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) reported at the end of February that the goals are getting further and further out of sight. In fact, the use of raw materials is after the coronac crisis instead of decreasing.
Save costs
The arrival of extra locations for recycling and storage, such as in Utrecht, is also under nationwide. “For a new depot or a paper auction, a site must fall into a ‘high environmental category’ because they can cause nuisance to the environment,” explains Schilderman. Out research Commissioned by employers’ organization VNO-NCW, it appeared at the end of 2023 that a number of municipalities in the middle of the country decide to scales that category. Often housing is the reason: if a residential area arises in the vicinity, the new residents should not be bothered by industrial noise or penetrating scents.
“At the same time, such a storage should not be too far outside the city, because then a lot of transport is needed again,” says Schilderman. The requirements package means that a municipality like Leiden has been looking for a location in vain for years, which means that it is not yet possible to reuse all the material from the public space. In Utrecht, raw material broker Bas van der Veer said he received ‘Gray Haren’ of the search, and he could hardly believe it when the location in Lage Weide eventually became available. The depot is located directly on the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal, which means that even transport of materials over water is possible.
The municipality purchased the site in 2023 for 20.3 million euros. According to Schilderman, there is a “good business case”. Every year the municipality spends on average around 150 million euros in new raw materials for the public space, which together are good for a traffic jam of trucks from the Domstad to Barcelona. “Bad for the planet, but also for the wallet,” said the alderman.
Whether a depot actually saves money is, according to director Matthijs Haveman of the Utrecht road construction company D. van der Steen, the question. In recent years, the company has worked on the redesign of the Utrecht city center. “From austerity point of view you don’t always have to do reuse,” says Haveman. “Economically, for example, a new tile is cheaper. It may cost perhaps 50 cents to make such a tile, and in that case you have no costs for an interim storage location or transport from and to that location.”
But, Haveman emphasizes, the depot is certainly more sustainable. “A new tile needs new cement. The concrete industry is one of the most polluting sectors in the world. Raw materials must also be shipped, which contributes extra to the climate impact. I think 70 to 80 percent of a tiled street can be used again.”
Geopolitical developments
According to Schilderman, reuse can be financially fined if you also take the longer depreciation period of the material with you. “In practice, a stone can really last longer than thirty or fifty years.” She mentions another advantage: due to reuse, the Netherlands is less dependent on the global supply chain for materials, which can be seriously disturbed by geopolitical developments.
Not every Utrecht project in the public space will immediately consist entirely of reused material, it acknowledges. Sometimes other interests, such as the new -build district that “must be in the brochure” and where no hodgepodge of old stones fits, or reinstines of the city that have been worked on for years and where deviations from plans are not possible.
In the future, raw material broker Van der Veer hopes that developers and architects have already ready to sniff around in the depot. “Maybe they will see a new application in a stone or beam,” he says. “Because why would you buy something new if you can still use the old?”
