The Dutch construction sector purchases nearly 49 million tonnes of materials annually (excluding soil, sand, and clay), while only about 20 million tonnes become available from demolition and renovation. Demand is therefore roughly 2.5 times higher than the sector’s own secondary supply. This structural gap lies at the heart of the circular construction challenge.
Recent research on material flows and environmental impacts in construction and infrastructure shows that circularity is not merely a design issue, but fundamentally a logistics system challenge. The study, commissioned by Rijkswaterstaat and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, highlights how material matching, timing, and quality constraints determine whether circular ambitions translate into practice.
Differences between infrastructure and building construction
In civil engineering (roads, bridges, waterworks), theoretically, about two-thirds of material demand could be met by released flows, particularly asphalt and concrete. In practice, however, actual reuse rates are lower due to quality degradation, contamination, and logistical constraints. Better separation, regional storage capacity, and shorter supply chains are essential.
In residential and non-residential building construction, the imbalance is more structural. The theoretical secondary supply covers less than 20% of demand. Concrete dominates volumes, but matching rates remain limited. This creates a significant logistical challenge: identifying, temporarily storing, certifying, and redeploying materials at scale.
From bulk to technology: growing logistical complexity
A striking shift is that environmental impact is increasingly linked less to sheer mass and more to technical installations. The energy transition (heat pumps, solar panels, electricity infrastructure) shifts material flows from heavy bulk to high-value components containing copper, aluminium, and electronics. These materials are suitable for refurbishment and reuse, but demand more refined logistics.
This transition implies:
- More high-value, smaller, and fragile flows
- Higher requirements for traceability and quality assurance
- Greater importance of reverse logistics and refurbishment
- The need for regional hubs for sorting and remanufacturing
Circular construction is therefore evolving from a bulk-logistics problem into a fine-grained, high-precision supply-chain operation.
Towards 2050: potential depends on organization
By 2050, new-build volumes are expected to decline, while renovation and replacement volumes are expected to increase. In theory, nearly half of the material demand in building construction could then be covered internally. However, this will not happen automatically.
Without strong logistical coordination, reuse remains fragmented and inefficient. What the sector needs includes:
- Regional circular material hubs linking supply and demand
- Digital marketplaces for secondary materials
- Data integration between demolition and new-build projects, including BIM and asset management systems
- Design for disassembly
- Optimized transport planning to minimize additional CO₂ emissions
The real bottleneck: data and collaboration
The study underscores deficiencies in data quality, especially in infrastructure. Without reliable information on quantities, quality, and timing of released materials, circular matching remains largely theoretical.
For logistics professionals and construction wholesalers, this represents a strategic opportunity. Circular construction is fundamentally a logistics transition: from linear sourcing to closed loops, from bulk distribution to intelligent regional matching, and from project-based transport to integrated supply chain orchestration.
Contractors and clients can act now by mapping reusable materials from demolition projects against upcoming regional construction needs, establishing agreements with logistics partners and hubs for temporary storage and redistribution, and integrating demolition and construction planning through BIM-driven logistics optimization.
Those who want to build circularly must first learn to organize in a circular way. The construction sector of 2050 requires not just different materials, but a fundamentally different logistics architecture.
Walther Ploos van Amstel.
Also read: Amsterdam’s Circular Economy: A Spatial and Logistics Wake-Up Call