Translated by UiOGPT
If you drive behind a truck with stone, soil, and gravel on the truck bed crossing the border from Oslo, the journey will often end at a waste disposal site in a neighboring municipality. What is being dumped are stone, soil, and gravel from construction projects in the capital.
Why do we know this? Because it was this somewhat unconventional approach to data collection that Professor Bjørnar Sæther used when he wanted to find out what happens to the excavated materials from construction projects in Oslo.
"Authorities register how much citizens throw in the trash, including what is treated as hazardous waste. But when it comes to the enormous amounts of stone, gravel, and soil that need to be removed after blasting and excavation, there is little information. That’s why I got in the car and followed the trucks," says Sæther.
Trippeled consumption of natural resources
Stone by stone, cities and towns are being excavated to pave the way for new buildings and infrastructure. The higher the construction, the deeper the excavation needs to be.
The conversation about where the masses end up takes place in Sæther's office at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at Blindern.
"Urbanization and densification in cities create an almost insatiable demand for dumping stone and soil. Only 10 to 20 percent is reused. The construction of the Life Sciences Building at the University of Oslo resulted in about 14,000 truckloads to get rid of the excess material," Sæther reports.
The consumption of natural resources has more than tripled in the last 50 years. Construction accounts for the majority of resource use, according to the report Global Resources Outlook 2024 from the UN Resource Panel.
"Loss of biodiversity and climate change have long been highlighted as our two major challenges. What the UN now points to as the third major challenge is the increasing use of natural resources like stone and sand. There has been surprisingly little attention to this," Sæther says.
Unwanted attention on the topic
As a human geographer, Sæther is concerned with densification and urban development, and the question of what happens to the excess material. Is it encompassed by the circular economy or is it dumped? His curiosity about waste disposal sites was piqued by bike rides in the nearby area in Lillestrøm.
– The Romerike landscape is disappearing bit by bit, consumed by the development of roads, airports, and landfills. As for the landfills, there are hardly any studies, statistics, or overall overview of their number, volume, and land usage."
There are requirements for the landfills to be approved, but Sæther also followed trucks that drove to some smaller waste disposal sites that were not approved.
"In this project, we talked to those who were willing to talk to us, both from the authorities and from the industry. Some, like contractors and owners of large truck fleets, were unwilling to say much. The authorities also did not seem particularly interested in drawing attention to the issue."
The Netherlands imposes fees
The authorities have acknowledged that today's handling of excess material is a problem, something they did in a 2021 report on an intersectoral project on the disposal of unpolluted soil and stone. This is one of the few reports from Norwegian authorities that the researchers have found on the topic. Sæther is not aware of any plans to address it either.
He describes Norway as part of the Northern European resource periphery. Norway has the world's eighth highest material consumption after countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. It is about 42 tons per person and needs to be reduced to 6-7 tons to be sustainable.
"For the material to be reused, requirements must be imposed on developers, which presupposes good coordination between various state sectors, counties and municipalities. This is not the case today, and the excess material falls between different areas of responsibility. At the same time, Norway is covered by the EU's circular directive and should implement incentives that treat this as resources rather than waste."
The research group has compared Norway with the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, there are strict requirements for reuse. High fees are imposed at landfills, around 4,000 Norwegian kroner per ton.
Skewed and unsustainable development
The project is part of Include, a research center at UiO aimed at providing better knowledge on how we can achieve inclusive and fair energy, climate, and environmental transitions. The researchers are examining the importance of laws and regulations and will make recommendations on changes in legislation, policy design, and other measures.
As it currently stands, the law does not require developers to have a plan to reduce the extraction of excess materials. Sæther believes it is a paradox that while Oslo can boast about being an environmental capital with new, innovative buildings, bike paths, and public transport, no one talks about the tons of excess materials being dumped in neighboring municipalities.
"Oslo has stated that they do not want landfills. But the city indirectly has a large land use through the use of landfills in other municipalities."
There is no national overview of how many such waste disposal sites exist in Norway.
The landfills can lead to conflicts in local communities, as has happened with the Jølsen Environmental Park in Lillestrøm municipality. A decision was made to build a landfill there in 2019, but the permit was later revoked because neighbors and other stakeholders were not notified in accordance with the rules. The planned landfill area includes, among other things, a ravine valley, a nature type that is endangered and listed on Norway’s Red List for nature types.
Found illegal waste
There are requirements that the materials dumped in the landfills must not be contaminated, but today no inspections are carried out.
For example, researchers have found various forms of plastic in the landfills. Moreover, stone is not just stone. If removed from its natural element, certain types of stone can pollute; for instance, alum shale which is plentiful in Oslo. The rock is acid-forming and has a high uranium content, which can make the area radioactive. The storage and disposal of alum shale are strictly regulated with mandatory disposal requirements. There are substantial demands on the landfills and the handling, as these masses over time may result in acidic runoff that also contains environmentally hazardous heavy metals and uranium. But they have also found alum shale in the landfills.
This fall, the project will be summarized in a report with analyses and recommendations on what should be done.
"Here, among other things, we will argue that a different mindset about circular solutions is needed as a basis for changes in laws, regulations, and practices in the construction industry," Sæther concludes.