Norway’s radical recycling program is providing unbelievable results: up to 97 percent of the country’s plastic bottles are now recycled. Off the back of this success, other countries are now looking to the Scandi-model and hoping to learn from it. The success is thanks to the Norwegian government’s environmental taxes that reward companies that are environmentally friendly. Since 2014, all plastic producers and importers are subject to an environmental tax of around 40 cents per bottle. However, the more the company recycles, the lower the tax . If the company managed to recycle over 95 percent of its plastic, then the tax is dropped. Customers also pay a small “mortgage” on each bottled product they buy. To get back their money, they must deposit their used bottles in one of the 3,700 “mortgage machines” found in supermarkets and convenience stores across the country, which reads the barcode, registers the bottle, and gives them back a coupon. The scheme is spearheaded by Infinitum , a non-profit organization owned by the companies and organizations in the beverage industry who produce plastic. Any international importer that registers a plastic product for sale in Norway must sign an agreement with Infinitum and join […]
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