• Les denne artikkelen på norsk Bossets historie

– There was no waste collection, because not that much was seen as waste, he says.

Society eventually changes, and the need to collect garbage becomes clear. But not everything was well with the city’s waste disposal services, Egil Ertresvaang explains in Bergen by historie part III. The municipality had left overnight renovation to a private company, who removed the waste from outdoor toilets all over the city. It was shipped to barges by Dreggen, Torvet, Muren and Nyallmenning. Three times a week it was dragged out into the fjord and dumped in the sea. Other waste was brought to Nøstet and again thrown in the sea.

Sewers became more common in the 1850’s, which fed directly into Vågen or Lilli Lungegård where it polluted the harbour basin. Daytime renovation was performed by hired help, “usually prisoners from Bergenhus fortress or detainees from the penitentiary”. The trash was gathered in dumps in different places at the outskirts of the city.

The lacking handling of waste also affected public health. In the health law of 1860 the health committee would look at what influenced the health of residents. The city got regulations concerning the cleaning of streets and courtyards.

John Snow was an English physician and is today seen as one of the founders of modern epidemiology. When cholera broke out in Soho in London in 1854, the leading theory was that the infection came from “miasmas”, contaminated air. But this was incorrect, Snow though, and wrote in 1849 that the spread occurred through a public water pump.

To Breivik by carriage and by boat

In 1881 Bergen renovation services were established. The private renovators were let go, and the municipality took over all renovations.

• Pudrettfabrikken – en glemt virksomhet Article in Norwegian

“Some of us have a so-called water closet” it says in the same article, but it wasn’t “such modern facilities” that contributed to the operations in Breiviken. It was the barrels from those without running water that were sent there.

The garbage man calls the street from their sleep

The writer in Bergens Tidene describes it all so painterly:

The place was a “foul smelling pit”, where black crows circled the city’s waste. Inside the basin a grate went back and forth, until everything was smashed, and after 6 hours all the contents went into the fjord. But the grate was “infiltrated with pieces of cloth, bones, tin cans and other debris that won’t be dissolved and of course prevents the grate from working to the municipality’s full satisfaction”. People shouldn’ throw these things in the barrels, the foreman said.

It wasn’t easy to sort correctly back then either.

Then what happens with the debris that ends up in the grate? “This debris is brought together with other trash further out on the beach and dumped in the sea. (…) The sea of course washes back up a good portion of what is dumped, and the beach lays there like an open lexicon – everything from chocolate wrappers, orange peels, corks and rubber articles for pans, chamber pots, and scrapped prams.”

(Article continues under the picture)

Bergens Tidende Arkiv

From 1929 the trash from Bergen was sent by boat to Kollevåg at Askøy, or “Kollevåg bay – as the renovation workers call it”. It was estimated that it would be open for garbage for up to a dozen years. It continued much longer, all the way up to 1975.

The trash is still there, and was covered in 1982, 2005, and latest in 2018, but in 2020 much of the sand was gone. In 2013 the Norwegian Environment Agency warned that Bergen municipality must investigate the situation in Kollevåg (article in Norwegian). The increase in the carcinogenic compound PCB was alarmingly high. In 2014 the municipality said that the trash had emerged in places. There were also concerns about if there were environmental toxins in the old landfill, and that this could spread.

In 2016 researchers tested the water quality, and released a hundred cod in cages by Kollevåg. After six weeks the fish showed signs of environmental distress. The liver was affected, it had poor growth, and had proved PAH-compounds in the bile. “The ocean floor in Kollevåg contains the whole spectrum of pollution sins, such as PCB, heavy metals, pesticides, and brominated flame retardants,” said professor of environmental toxicology Anders Goksøyr to BT back then.

Bergen City Archive writes in the article Bossfyllingen på Slettebakksmyren (article in Norwegian) that Bergen and Årstad had to handle a steadily increasing amount of waste. In the 1930’s plans were started for a new landfill, but once the war broke out in 1940 it became hard to implement the renovation. Sea transport to Kollevåg halted. This led to Slettebakksmyren being used before draining and facilitation being completed. There was no collection for leachate, so the landfill has contaminated Tveitevannet. Today it is one of the most contaminated waters in Norway for the environmental toxin PCB.

Kurt Oddekalv thought that we could sort ourselves out of the problem instead. But we said that we had to build an incineration plant.

Toralf Igersund, BIR

– It was a battle that took a long time. And an almost equally big case as Bybanen is today, Toralf says.

We in the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature (Naturvernforbundet) weren’t totally in agreement with ourselves. We can’t afford to “start up the environmental hogwash that a new large landfill or incineration plant will represent”, we wrote in BT in March 1992.

It was also proposed to create a landfill in Langevatn, which we also rejected due to concern for endangered bird species.

Wanted a small incineration plant

BIR wasn’t alone in wanting an incineration plant. Terje Aasen, environmental protection manager in Bergen municipality, was also positive to this. He imagined a smaller plant that could receive 90.000 tons of waste annually, which also could function optimally with less. At the same time the municipality could still “use legal and economic means to press the degree og recycling as high as possible”. At the same time a central composting facility would be feasible.

It was also discussed if the incineration plant would be the environmentally friendly option, because incineration would drastically decrease the emission of dioxins.

The incineration plant opened in 1999, and today has the capacity to accept 200.000 tons of waste annually.

A solution that could counteract some  emissions, is to build a carbon capturing facility connected to the incineration plant. BIR wants to start by capturing 100.000 tons CO2 annually. In the future, maybe everything can be captured. The plan is to store the carbon that is captured on the ocean floor in the Norwegian continental shelf. But this is expensive. The facility is predicted to cost 1 billion NOK.

Waiting for new EU-demands

There are also many changes happening in legislation right now. 

– A lot of people are on the fence. They are waiting for new demands that are expected to come, after the EU has introduced new rules for the handling of waste and demands for how products are formed, Toralf says.

The goal of the legislative changes is to reduce the amount of waste and increase the degree of recycling. Norway follows the EU-regulations quite closely, but adapted for Norwegian legislations.

– We have high demands for waste sorting, but no one has reached the goal. Many say that we need to sort waste after collection to remove more fractions of waste. But it’s expensive. Opinions in BIR are split on whether a secondary sorting facility should be built.

– The producers should maybe also receive some responsibility, so they have to pay part of the bill. And that is also not clear yet, he says.

Carrot rather than stick

– The day that we started with flexible fees, we also started a digital journey, Toralf says.

Those who place their bins out for collection less often, get a lower bill. People got better at sorting trash once it paid off economically.

BIR could’ve made an app, but Toralf is unsure if people would use it.

– Would they pay attention to how good they are at sorting? How many resources should we spend on this? We can’t make a system that there is extremely low interest in.

Everything needs an address

BIR is concerned with a circular economy, and wants to contribute to making waste a resource. What does BIR mean with this term?

– We’ve thought a lot about that. We have to utilise every resource, not just recycle as materials. We’ve talked to a lot of people in the waste chain. Every material needs its own value chain. And then you need to talk to those who make the product. We need to speak and think across disciplines, more than we’ve been used to.

– We have almost no circular value chains today, Toralf points out.

Metal can easily be melted down and reshaped, but that’s not the case for all products. Many products are hard to recycle because they contain different types of materials that are hard to separate. That makes it hard to create cycles.

– Today we can have waste heat, for example, or surplus of a material. Today that is allowed, but in a circular economy this shouldn’t be permitted. Then everything needs an address, Toralf says.

– We can’t keep going like before.

The trash in Bergen is increasing

In 2022 BIR received 376 kg of waste per resident in the region, slightly below the national average. Households have gotten better, and today we throw out about as much as in 2010.

– It’s mass production of textiles, and increased consumption, Toralf says.

– Something has to be done here, but no one wants to go back to a time with so few things.

– Imagine if it could be profitable to repair! He exclaims. And the products have to be possible to repair, he points out.

Other solutions that he highlights are the option to rent things.

– Subscriptions for clothing or tools. We don’t have to own everything. Those kinds of models can also be interesting.

– The younger generations are more open to not owning a car or a cottage, but being able to access it through renting.

• Take care of what you've got Site in Norwegian
• Right to repair Article in Norwegian

Talking to new industries

BIR is in contact with other renovation businesses, and they learn from each other. There is no competition between the intermunicipal companies, so they have everything to gain from sharing experiences.

There are a lot of exciting projects going on. They have started a collaboration with Invertapro, who grows insects for protein. For comparison 4-5 kg of animal feel produces 1 kg of beef, or 1.5 kg feed for 1 kg of salmon. But when producing insects there is very little waste, almost 1 kg of feed for 1 kg og insect. This also requires much less area and water.

They are also planning a biogas facility at Voss. There they can accept cow manure and food waste gathered in paper bags. From this they can produce biogas. The bioresidue is made into fertiliser, which can replace todays fertiliser products.

Toralf imagines that a lot of innovation can happen with others in the future. Who does he look up to? Germany and the Netherlands are still in the lead.

– But we have nothing to be ashamed of, he finishes.