Master's Thesis Internship: Researching Environmental Costs Using Existing Waste and Emission Statistics

Are you that curious researcher who gets energy from data, sustainability, and new insights?
Do you want to make a substantive contribution to the statistics of Statistics Netherlands (CBS)?

The government wants the Netherlands to be fully circular by 2050. To be able to monitor whether we are meeting that objective, reliable information is needed regarding, among other things, waste and emissions into water. CBS collects and publishes this data for companies. In doing so, we primarily make use of data from the electronic Environmental Annual Report (e-MJV), supplemented by surveys.

In addition to the amount of waste and water emissions, we also map the environmental costs of companies, such as the costs for waste processing and for discharging wastewater. A separate survey is currently used for this. But is that actually necessary?

During your internship, you will investigate whether we can calculate the environmental costs for waste and water emissions using data that is already available. For example, you will combine data on the amount of waste and discharged water with existing indicators, such as average costs per ton of waste and sector-specific costs per cubic meter of discharged water.

You will, among other things:

• analyze existing data and indicators and assess them for usability;

• investigate which method is most suitable for estimating environmental costs;

• develop a calculation or model from which the costs can be derived;

• compare the results with the available data from the current survey;

• investigate how reliable and usable the estimates are;

• translate your findings into concrete advice for CBS.

With your research, we want to determine whether we can extract more from existing data and need to request less from companies. If it turns out that environmental costs can be reliably calculated, the results can furthermore be used to verify the existing waste and water statistics.

In the most favorable scenario, the separate survey on environmental costs can be partially or completely discontinued. This means less administrative burden for companies, more efficient use of available data, and potentially more reliable statistics.

We welcome you within the Living Environment sector in the Environment team. With 20 driven professionals, we work on environment-related statistics and conduct research into current themes such as climate (change) and the circular economy. We work closely with other teams within CBS.

We work hard to continuously improve our statistics and to make the figures available to the public. Examples of recent publications from our team are:

• Companies invested less in the environment in 2024 | CBS

• Almost 2 percent more business and industrial waste in 2021 | CBS

• Environmental costs and investments of companies | CBS

You are following a master's program in environmental science, economics, technical administration, data science, or a related field.

• You have an affinity with the subject of the circular economy.

• You are analytically strong and can investigate complex issues in a structured manner and translate them into clear insights.

• You can program well in R.

• You are socially and communicatively skilled and can clearly convey your ideas and findings to various interlocutors.

Because all communication during the internship - both oral and written - takes place in Dutch, a good command of the Dutch language is necessary.

A pleasant learning environment in which you:

• strengthen your competencies in quantitative data analysis by making use of environmental statistics and economic data sources;

• sharpen your research skills in the field of the circular economy and life cycle assessment;

• further develop your programming skills in R;

• gain experience in interpreting different datasets to establish reliable profiles.

In return for your commitment, you will receive an internship allowance of € 800 gross per month (based on 40 hours per week).

Together with your internship supervisor, you will coordinate how you can work hybridly, with flexible working hours and the option to work partly from home on your internship assignment.

This concerns an internship assignment and not a work experience placement. Before you begin the internship, we expect you to have an internship supervisor from your educational institution, with whom the internship has been coordinated and concrete learning objectives have been agreed upon.
This internship assignment is intended for students who are currently enrolled at an educational institution; graduates are not eligible.