The cure for disposable plastic crap is here—and it’s loony – WIRED

Even so, in the US, only a minority of PET bottles get recycled. The main PET industry association puts the recycling rate at 29 percent, while Greenpeace says it’s 20.9 percent. In Norway, though, Infinitum recycles nearly every damn bottle. How the heck did they achieve this?

With a combo of clever technology and deft public policy. As is often the case, the policy was the prime mover. Running a recycling program requires a lot of expensive labor and systems. You have to collect the plastic and separate it by type, which is expensive.

So in the late ’90s, Norway passed a law that forced somebody to pay for it—specifically, companies such as Coca-Cola that make plastic PET containers. Firms got hit with a new tax if they didn’t pay to collect and recycle used bottles. If the beverage companies can prove they’re recycling 95 percent as many bottles as they sell, they pay no tax. Otherwise, the less they recycle, the more they owe—until they’re paying “hundreds of millions of Norwegian kroner,” Maldum said (tens of millions of US dollars).