Netherlands Compared 2020
The latest Netherlands Compared is available online!
All articles
Dutch Start-up FUMI Ingredients Develops Industrial Scale Plant-based Egg Whites
Egg white is the most important animal-based ingredient in many food products, from marshmallows and merengues to most bakery products. Using micro-organisms, the Netherlands Wageningen University biochemists Edgar Suarez Garcia and Corjan van den Berg, founders of FUMI Ingredients, created a tasteless ingredient with the same emulsification, foaming and binding qualities as animal-based egg white.
Growing robust, nutritious potatoes with disease-free seeds
Contaminated potatoes, expensive pesticides and low crop yields are all things of the past thanks to Netherlands company, Solynta. Their hybrid breeding technique replaces the common potato-tuber with ‘true seeds’.
Air-cleaning bicycles
The air around us is becoming dirtier, especially in the world’s larger cities. At the same time we have to deal with massive traffic congestion. Dutch entrepreneurs want to collaborate with governments, students and companies to make a smog free city and get people out their cars and use greener forms of transportation.
Special partnership makes female entrepreneurs less vulnerable
Selling shea nuts they gathered themselves is how many women in Mali and Burkina Faso earn a living. It's a precarious, season-dependent livelihood – but thanks to a public-private partnership (PPP), a Facility for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Food Security (FDOV) programme sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, more and more female entrepreneurs in these countries have additional sources of income.
Sustainable hamburgers made from … crickets?!
Global demand for food is set to outpace the available food production capacity, while destroying the climate goals. It is important to provide enough food and upgrade the capacity, while keeping an eye on sustainability. Dutch company De Krekerij thinks that using insects as a sustainable meat substitute can contribute to food security and while creating a circular planet together.
Plastic bicycle paths
The world consumes 350 million tons of plastic every year. Much of it ends up on landfills or gets incinerated. Europeans alone generate 25 million tons of plastic waste, of which only 30% is reused or recycled. Dutch company PlasticRoad wants to help to reduce this waste by building bicycle paths made from recycled plastic.