13 votes

Bergen in Norway has been building one of the world's most advanced trash systems – using vacuum tubes to whisk waste away

Posted by mycketforvirrad
Tags: climate change, pollution.air, recycling, norway.bergen, transport, automotive, vehicles.service, trucks.garbage, waste, waste management, infrastructure, technology, pneumatic, automated vacuum collection, neighbourhoods, urban planning, politics, government.local, policy.environment, cities, author.nicolas rivero, source.the washington post, paywall
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/06/11/bergen-norway-pneumatic-waste-collection/

Link information

This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.

Title
Trash sucks: A Norwegian city uses vacuum tubes to whisk waste away
Published
Jun 11 2025
Word count
1477 words

3 comments

  1. [2]
    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link
    Fascinating that even a small price can influence collective behaviour to the tune of 15% increase in recycling! I wonder if there were more discrete micro-fees like this for other behaviours that...

    There is no charge to use recycling inlets for paper, cardboard and plastic, or traditional bins set up for compost, glass and metal — but if you use the garbage chute more than four times a month, it costs about $1 per swipe.
    …
    Wherever the city has introduced the new waste fees, recycling has gone up by 15 percent compared with neighborhoods without the fees, the economists determined. Residents tended to report being unhappy with the fee on surveys. But the economists found that if they combined the fee announcement with a letter explaining why it’s important to recycle — and also a sticker of a smiling whale urging residents to save the planet — customer satisfaction scores went back to normal.

    Fascinating that even a small price can influence collective behaviour to the tune of 15% increase in recycling! I wonder if there were more discrete micro-fees like this for other behaviours that work well at the macro scale, how it might influence things on a larger scale.

    For example, personally I’m not super happy with the amount of plastic packaging I end up with if I do a supermarket trip and don’t think about it, so more non-plastic options would be great. If there was a tiny surcharge for the percentage of my general waste that’s plastic, it might be enough to get me to pick other options (even if the overall price difference doesn’t make sense — I think loss aversion is stronger than the rational “which is overall more expensive” calculation)

    6 votes
    1. jackson
      Link Parent
      I recently moved into an apartment that doesn't do traditional billing for waste services - instead of a flat monthly fee, I order trash/recycling bags from the city (roughly $5/bag for trash and...

      I recently moved into an apartment that doesn't do traditional billing for waste services - instead of a flat monthly fee, I order trash/recycling bags from the city (roughly $5/bag for trash and $2.50/bag for recycling) and that serves as my waste services payment. Compost and corrugated cardboard recycling are free.

      I've definitely been more keen to properly recycle and compost when I otherwise wouldn't be due to a lack of time or willingness to clean out a plastic container.

      As for the grocery store, I was very pleasantly surprised to see stores up here start to offer paper bags for produce rather than the normal plastic film bags. I've also seen compostable bags but those are such a pain to work with (and paper is compostable anyways).

      3 votes