#132 Quantum asphalt
For decades I have been thinking about how to change the world, only to realize recently that it may have been happening right under our noses. Or rather, under our feet. Or rather still, beneath the tires of our cars and trucks.
In the late 10s, I spent quite some time trying to make sense of how organizations navigate the future. We called the resulting method quantum culture. Its premise was simple: no organization runs on a single logic. At any moment, multiple systems compete to shape its decisions. Some reward continuity, others change. Leadership, I argued, lies in recognizing which system to activate when.
We distinguished three primary systems: markets, relationships, and what we called open-source culture. Markets reward efficiency and scale, operate on clear hierarchical lines largely independent of society. Relationships build on trust and clearly delineated responsibilities. Open-source systems mobilize collective intelligence around ambitious causes. Successful organizations rarely rely on only one. They shift between them continuously. My work in public organizations had exposed me to innumerable approaches, existing in parallel, hence the quantum.
When I moved into the private sector, however, that complexity seemed to disappear. Here the rules appeared straightforward: the market decides. My task seemed simple too: make the company I work for as sustainable as possible while leaving its core logic intact. Within market rules, anything seemed achievable.
But sustainability is not simply about improving outcomes within a system. It often requires changing the system itself. Markets alone rarely produce that shift. Even their most committed advocates, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, et al. relied on coordinated legal, institutional, and cultural strategies to make the market dominant. Durable change never comes from one logic alone.
I soon met colleagues who instinctively understood this. They were not just optimizing their own tasks; they were quietly, decidedly reshaping the conditions around them. And to understand what they were doing, you have to understand asphalt.
Asphalt is, at first glance, a simple material: stones bound together with bitumen. It is cheap, flexible, and well suited to countries like the Netherlands with soft soils and dense traffic. Yet its simplicity hides a paradox. Because it is cheap, it is bought competitively. Because it is bought competitively, margins are thin. And because margins are thin, investments in cleaner production methods or longer lifespans are difficult to recover and justify. Which is especially tragic, as asphalt production and application account for roughly one percent of all Dutch carbon emissions.
This combination of low price, high volume, and significant environmental impact creates a structural tension. Innovations exist and have existed for decades: lower-temperature production, circular reuse of materials, biobased binders, quieter surfaces, longer-lasting mixtures. Technically, sustainable asphalt is already possible. Economically, however, it struggles to scale.
The reason is systemic. In a highly competitive procurement environment, any company that invests heavily in sustainability risks being undercut by competitors who do not. Public clients, bound to ensure fair competition, cannot easily reward pioneers at scale. The result resembles a large-scale prisoner’s dilemma: everyone sees the need to change, yet no single actor can move first without risk.
Which brings us to an insight that increasingly shapes my work: If we fail to organize sustainability as a system, we will soon lose both our business and our front runner position in our sector and market. This is not an ethical warning. It is an economic prediction.
As long as sustainability remains an optional feature, investments remain uncertain, innovation fragmented, and emissions persistent. But if we manage to embed sustainability in procurement rules, material standards, and shared roadmaps, the logic changes. Investments gain predictability. Standardization reduces costs. Scale makes new technologies viable. Sustainability stops being a competitive disadvantage and becomes a market standard.
Across the Dutch asphalt sector, that shift is beginning to take shape. Authorities are moving from buying tons of material toward managing infrastructure as long-term assets. A high point was last year, 4 December, when Rijkswaterstaat, the national road organization, set the new rules for the sector after years of thoughtful debate. Procurement increasingly rewards lifespan and performance. Standardization of mixtures is encouraged to enable cleaner production and circular reuse. Data systems are being developed to track material flows and validate quality. And at the same time, collective initiatives such as the National Platform for Sustainable Road Paving (NPDW) are emerging to align initiatives, validate innovations, and coordinate efforts across the chain.
These developments may appear technical, but their significance is structural. Asphalt is no longer treated merely as a commodity to be delivered, but as a system to be governed.
And this is where the lesson extends beyond infrastructure. And why I’m so proud and honored to play my little part in this movement.
We often imagine that changing the world requires new ideas or stronger arguments. But large systems rarely change through creative breakthroughs or top-down persuasion alone. They change when rules, incentives, and collaborations begin to shift in the same direction. Once that happens, future-proof decisions follow almost automatically.
Asphalt is an ideal playground for lasting change. While its impact is significant, the sector is relatively manageable — we’re talking hundreds rather than thousands of involved organizations. A country like The Netherlands may have 140,000 km of paved roads, it only has twenty odd asphalt plants. Its transformation is a complex problem, but doable while remaining instructive for larger, more complicated contexts.
That’s not to say that there is no pushback. It is naive to think that a system can be changed without it affecting the actors in the system. And while some will benefit from a more sustainable road paving sector, others will see their business model evaporate. Especially if your competitive advantage depends on externalizing costs.
In quantum physics, a particle can exist in more than one state at once. Roads cannot. We cannot sustain a market built on externalizing costs while also demanding collective climate responsibility. One logic will shape the system, and the system will shape the outcomes. The question is not whether we choose, but whether we recognize that the choice is already being made.
— Jasper