What do we see?
The table below gives an overview of the clay, loam and sand reserves available in Flanders. Each of these are important raw materials for the construction and maintenance of our building stock. The quantity of available sand is by far the largest, followed by clay and loam, which are two orders of magnitude lower. The determination of these reserves took place some time ago; we cannot therefore make any statements about the current state of the reserves.
What’s the aim?
In Flanders, we have limited resource reserves, both in nature and in quantities of raw materials. The estimates show to what level we can mine certain raw materials in Flanders. At the same time, we see that the demand for available raw materials is increasing as a result of the growth of our building stock. In a circular economy, we aim to minimise the input of new raw materials by keeping the materials in use as long and as high quality as possible. The more we succeed in this, the longer we can get by with available resources and the fewer impacts caused by their extraction, for example on landscape and biodiversity.
What does this indicator measure?
This indicator was compiled from the most recent estimates of resource reserves available for Flanders. For stocks on land, figures were taken from publications of the former Department of Environment, Nature and Energy (the current Department of Environment). For stocks at sea, figures were taken from reporting by the FPS Economy.
