Background
The City spends 200 million euros every year on projects in public spaces, involving the extensive use of materials. These materials are generally new and made of primary raw materials. This is a linear approach, so that the City is contributing to the depletion of the earth’s raw materials and is aggravating CO2 emissions. That is why we wish to move to a circular approach, so that we have a circular system in place by 2025. Circular and innovation-orientated procurement will become the new standard.
The construction sector is one of the sectors with the most potential for a circular approach. This of course pertains to the construction of buildings, but also of public spaces. For the entire construction sector in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (AMA), making the transition from a linear to a circular economy could save 500,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, as well as 500,000 tonnes of materials. This sector turns over 85 million euros a year in the AMA.
In Amsterdam’s public spaces, 85 million euros is spent on the management and maintenance of surfacing of public spaces. The City wishes to make these activities as circular as possible. This would mean savings in the use of materials, resulting from interventions and their re-use as high-quality raw materials, so that, eventually, primary raw materials will hardly be used, if at all.
Develop an innovative way to help Amsterdam’s public spaces become part of the circular economy.
Criteria
Issued by: RVE Verkeer en Openbare Ruimte