According to a 2021 report conducted by the Council of Canadian Academies, 73% of our resources in Canada are lost to disposal. The same report shared that Canada’s circularity rate, the percentage of the economy’s material needs that are met using recycled or recovered materials, is only 6%. To meet Canada’s environmental goals and emissions targets, our circularity rate needs to improve. This can be accomplished by building circular systems of production and consumption that keep resources in use instead of wasting them, in other words, we need a circular economy.
To learn more about this, Divert NS Business Development Officer, Sasha Barnard, was selected, along with other Canadian delegates, to participate in the “Canadian Waste to Resource Mission,” in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is a world leader in circularity with an impressive recovered materials use rate of over 30%. The Canadian delegation had the opportunity to see first-hand how Dutch cities and regions integrate the circular economy into daily life with the goal of taking that expertise back to Canada.
On the first day of the mission, delegates spent the morning in The Hague learning about the history of waste management and circular economy in the Netherlands. The morning included presentations from staff at the Municipality of Utrecht and Rijkswaterstaat. Rijkswaterstaat is the executive agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management that leads their national circular economy policy and innovation.
