I’m Snorre Gylterud, working at RecycleMatch during my exchange program in entrepreneurship at University of Oslo and Rice University and for my second blog post I wanted to highlight some of the initiatives and incentives toward environmental awareness in my country, Norway. Being from a foreign country working in the green space, I would like to share my perspective on the environmental awareness incentives in Norway.

Consumer products and basically all material resources used needs a functioning, closed lifecycle. The drink container return program, “pant”, is a good example of that. When you buy a soda in Norway (glass, plastic or aluminum) they are all marked with a deposit mark, which is an indicator on how much you pay in deposit on the container (typically $ 0.25 or $ 0.50). When your closets and hallways flood with PET bottles you bring it to the grocery store and get redemption for your money.(Source for pant: http://pant.no/, only in Norwegian). The PANT program helps Norway save twice as much energy as the savings generated from Earth Hour.

The plastic PET bottles are washed and reused as bottles if they are in good shape, or melted down and used for products like fleece sweaters. This system seems to work well in Scandinavia. From a social entrepreneurial side it adds value as well. Homeless people or people with low income can make honest money collecting bottles which keep the streets clear of drink container waste. This activity is even popular amongst students, in the end of the month when the allowance is getting low.

Another recycle program that has been successful is the trade-in discount. Here you get a discount on new household appliances if you trade in your appliances. In most recycle programs the lifecycle is not complete. Many products are not designed to be easily recycled. Recycle programs just feels like a lot of effort for consumers and some products don’t have a good recycle program. In this field the consumer product industry have to take their share of the action.

We need to have simple, well functioning incentives for the consumer to recycle. It does not matter to much that the government place recycling dumpsters if it takes to much effort to use them. In Norway I often find them to be placed too far away for convenience and as a student I can’t afford a car which makes it even less convenient. I bring my drinking containers to the grocery store though, because that will make it a cheap dinner that day.

After a long example, let’s talk about some of the other initiatives that impact the environmental awareness. The Rainmakers is one of several programs for children in northern Europe that a lot of Norwegian kids involve in. It was initiated by Enova SF with a goal of involving and creating engagement for the energy subject among children and youngsters, and spread all over EU. “Children taking an active part in their own education is not a new idea, as much as it is the natural way of learning” (see this page http://bit.ly/dAPssM).

Enoek is another program that has involved people of all ages in environmental awareness that started in 2002 and has done a great share of the effort of with regards to efficient shower heads , energy saving and general recycling awareness in Norway. Their name actually became a generic term for energy saving! Almost every town in Norway have a program for recycling consumer waste (usually paper, food and plastics).

For corporate awareness Enova SF also has interests. They focus on energy consumption and energy generation, especially in the renewable energy sector. You can read more about them here (http://bit.ly/cWbXpH). The industry also has a magazine called “Kretsloepet” (http://bit.ly/bTK2eL, only Norwegian) that write about challenges and success stories. Last, the Federation of Norwegian Industries (http://bit.ly/bt8suc, only Norwegian) have their own site for recycling and try to interest students with the recycling school (http://bit.ly/dAPssM, only Norwegian).

I hope this blog post gave a couple of examples and insights on how the Norwegians handle environmental awareness. If you have any questions please let me know. I can be reached through RecycleMatch.