Some Oslo residents may secretly be breathing a sigh of relief, after news broke Monday that they won’t immediately need to make room under their kitchen sinks for a new, elaborate system of sorting their garbage.
Newspaper Aftenposten reported that the city has delayed plans to usher in city-wide kildesortering, the system that requires households to put their food scraps, plastic, paper and glass/metal garbage in separate containers.
Most Norwegian cities already have household garbage-sorting systems, and Oslo was supposed to introduce its own by the end of next year. Now, however, city officials are worried that the sorting plant needed will be much more expensive than initially thought. They halted planned construction of the plant at Klemetsrud, on Oslo’s south side, pending budget negotiations in December.
Opposition politicians from the Labour and Red parties were quick to criticize Oslo’s Conservative-led government for failing to carry out such an environmentally friendly project. Some sorting plants are already in operations, though, and city officials insist they remain committed to the concept.
While recycling and garbage-sorting is politically correct and generally supported, not everyone likes it in the cities where it’s begun. Some have seen an increase in rats around food scrap containers while others think it’s smelly to let food scraps build up and that the containers require a lot of space in small apartments.
Views and News staff
