How Norway manages to recycle 97% of plastic bottles

97% of plastic bottles used in Norway are recycled. An impressive percentage. Through a company and a model called Infinitum, the Scandinavian country has devised one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly ways to recycle bottles. And the results are so impressive that many nations are following suit

Infinitum, the winning Norwegian model that recycles 97% of plastic bottles

Solving the problem of plastic pollution, at least in Norway, doesn't seem so impossible. Thanks to the system implemented, less than 1% of the bottles ends up dispersed in the environment. A real miracle when you consider that in the rest of the world, on average, 91% of the plastic produced is not recycled. Indeed: 8 million tons of waste end up in the ocean every year.

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What is Infinitum and how it works

The Norwegian model is based on one loan scheme. When a consumer buys a plastic bottle, he is charged a small surcharge of around 12-27 euro cents. This amount is returned when the bottle is returned both to the points of sale where it was purchased and to the special distributors, where a barcode is read and a coupon or money is delivered directly. In addition, shop owners also receive a small compensation for each bottle they recycle.

But consumers are not the only category on which the system is based. At the same time, the country also introduced aan environmental tax for all plastic producers. Here lies the novelty: the greater the amount of recycling by producers, the more the tax is reduced. Furthermore, if the producers recycle more than 95% of it, the tax does not have to be paid. A result achieved since 2011, for 7 consecutive years.

There are around 3.700 trading machines in Norway, while there are over 12.000 deposit sites.

This system allowed Norway to recycle 97% of all its plastic bottles. In addition, 92% of those recycled produce high quality material that comes reused in beverage bottles. In some cases, it was possible to reuse the same material more than 50 times.

Infinite Cosa fa

Since 1999, the Infinitum company owns and operates the storage system for recyclable beverage containers and plastic bottles. Their warehouse operates 24 hours a day, 5 days a week and turns bottles into clean plastic bales ready for recycling.

“Our goal is not financial profit, but to ensure efficient, forward-looking and environmentally friendly operation of the deposit system. Our ambition is to ensure the high quality collection and recycling of all recyclable bottles and boxes " it is read on the official website.

Value recycling

What the country did concretely was give strong economic value to recycling, from production to consumption, a value that does not have elsewhere. Today, it's often cheaper to create new plastic than to recycle old, so without a financial incentive, why should businesses and consumers care about doing the right thing for the environment?

"We want to get to the point where people realize they're not buying the product, they're just borrowing the packaging", he told the Guardian Kjell Olav Maldum, CEO of Infinity.

Since the advent of this unique scheme, Infinitum has been visited by representatives from many countries, including Scotland, India, China and Australia, all interested in learning and following the Norwegian model.

Germany and Lithuania are among the few countries that can compete with Norway, and both use similar systems. However, even in Norway, there is still room for improvement. In 2018, Infinitum estimated that 150.000 bottles were not returned, and if consumers had, it would have saved the energy needed to meet the annual needs of 5.600 families.

Incredible but true!

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