Norwegians throw bottles, cans worth $12 mn annually

Every day more than 270,000 bottles and cans end up in trash bins in Norwegian homes and about 100 million krones (12 million U.S. dollars) worth of such containers are thrown away per year, daily newspaper Aftenposten reported on Tuesday.

In addition, 35-40 million krones (4-5 million U.S. dollars)worth of bottles and cans are annually thrown into the nature in Norway, where people can use the bottle and can deposit system after they have purchased the products with added charge.

They have the opportunity to get this deposit money back once they return the empty bottles and cans to a reverse vending machine in grocery shops, which will send them further to a recycle facility. Many, however, do not use the benefits of this system.

According to the Aftenposten report, almost 150 million deposit bottles and cans disappear annually, either in the nature or the trash bins, as it is often case. This number increases gradually as people drink more and more beer and juice.

In case these bottles were returned, it would save as much energy as a total consumption for 1,000 Norwegian households per year, the report said, adding that this is not only a matter of economic loss but of insufficient environmental protection as well.

Oistein Mjaerum, marketing director of the Norwegian Red Cross, expressed a big concern over the money lost when the bottles and cans are thrown away.

"We could have helped unimaginably many people with this amount by increasing the activities for children and youth in difficult situations and also all those children that come from poor families," he told Aftenposten.

According to Aftenposten, it is much better to melt and reproduce new bottles and cans than to burn the garbage to produce heating, as only one bottle that is recycled and made into a new one saves as much energy as 12 full charges of mobile telephone every single time.

Around 3.2 million krones annually are lost per one Norwegian municipality due to the bottles and cans that are thrown in the garbage instead of recycling, which means the total loss of around 100 million krones per year in the whole country, according to the report.

Two years ago the Norwegian Environment Agency suggested to increase the deposit in order to reduce the throwing of bottles and cans -- from the current one krone to two krones for small bottles and cans up to 0.5 liter, and from 2.5 to three krones for those over half a liter.

However, the Norwegian government has not reached a final decision yet. The lowest charge has not changed since 1986 and the highest charge was last time adjusted in 1993. (1 U.S. dollar= 8.3 Norwegian krones)
Source;XINHUA