Plastic waste and products are new statistics from Statistics Norway. The first release will be 5 November 2025.
Statistikk innhold
Statistics on
Plastic waste and products
The statistics show statistics on the supply of plastic and plastic waste. The figures presented are summarized for the country, and highlight various aspects of plastic in Norwegian society. The statistics are in development, and may be subject to expansion and changes in the future.
Selected figures from these statistics
- Plastic waste, unit in 1 000 tonnesDownload table as ...Plastic waste, unit in 1 000 tonnes
2020 2022 2023 Change in percent 2022 - 2023 2020 - 2023 Waste Plastic waste, total 694.6 690.7 690.0 -0.1 -0.7 Plastic waste - import 16.0 5.1 3.4 -32.6 -78.6 Plastic waste - export 116.6 108.5 114.9 5.9 -1.5 Product Primary plastic - production 483 421 426 -11.7 1.4 Explanation of symbolsDownload table as ... - Plastic waste by industry, unit in tonnesDownload table as ...Plastic waste by industry, unit in tonnes
2023 Total Separated plastic Plastics in mixed waste Plastics in EE-waste Plastics in discarded wehicles Plastics in textiles Plastics in car tyres Plastics in leisure boats All industries 690 030 156 676 396 456 34 545 19 296 65 222 14 458 3 377 Agriculture, forestry and fishing 38 121 28 299 6 416 656 844 1 905 0 0 Mining and quarrying 1 479 826 381 198 16 57 0 0 Manufacturing 68 893 18 687 41 309 2 185 90 6 622 0 0 Electricity, gas and steam 1 973 94 1 063 653 3 160 0 0 Water supply, sewerage, waste 50 449 476 42 892 557 49 6 475 0 0 Construction 33 778 11 482 13 856 2 170 362 5 908 0 0 Service industries 213 348 46 613 119 079 9 295 5 838 18 065 14 458 0 Other/unknown industry 52 843 0 39 071 7 883 0 5 888 0 0 Private households 229 147 50 199 132 389 10 948 12 094 20 140 0 3 377 Explanation of symbolsDownload table as ... - Plastic waste after treatment, unit in tonnesDownload table as ...Plastic waste after treatment, unit in tonnes
2023 Total Separated plastic Plastics in mixed waste Plastics in EE-waste Plastics in discarded wehicles Plastics in textiles Plastics in car tyres Plastics in leisure boats Treatment, total 692 670 156 676 396 456 34 545 19 296 65 222 17 099 3 377 Sent to material recovery 194 370 109 345 34 258 24 092 17 019 5 624 4 032 0 Biogas production 5 0 5 0 0 1 0 0 Composting 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 Filling compound and cover material 12 130 0 10 372 95 0 1 663 0 0 Incineration 423 911 36 696 314 306 6 723 1 852 51 706 12 628 0 Landfill 52 985 10 612 35 183 1 119 425 5 641 6 0 Other disposal 5 805 0 0 2 428 0 0 0 3 377 Unknown 3 462 23 2 331 88 0 586 434 0 Explanation of symbolsDownload table as ...
About the statistics
The information under «About the statistics» was last updated 4 November 2025.
Waste treatment is a physical, chemical or biological change of waste for resource utilization, neutralization (material recycling, composting or incineration), final placement (landfill, dumping, export, reuse) or preparation for this, at an approved facility.
Landfill is the final placement of waste at an approved landfill.
Energy utilization is the utilization of the energy released by waste incineration, for example for heating buildings, and is calculated as the percentage of energy utilized in relation to the amount of energy produced.
Household waste. In relation to data based on foreign trade/customs data, it is defined based on HS code 38.25.10 Municipal waste (customs tariff), while within waste, household waste is somewhat broadly defined as waste that originates from activities related to households (food waste, packaging, furniture, etc.)
Green-listed waste can only be recycled. The waste must not contain substances harmful to health or the environment. Typical examples of green-listed waste are pure fractions of paper, plastic or metal. Export of green-listed waste is not subject to application, but there is a requirement for classification and is covered by the requirements of Article 18 of the EU Cross-Border Regulation.
Notifiable waste must be reported to the authorities upon import and export, and includes the following items:
- All hazardous waste.
- All waste for final treatment, for example for landfill or incineration without energy recovery.
- All mixed waste, for example household waste.
- Ships and other vessels that do not fall under the regulations on the recycling of ships and mobile units.
- All waste that does not meet the requirements for green-listed waste.
Material recycling is the utilization of waste so that the material is retained in whole or in part. Examples are the production of raw material paper from collected recycled paper and composting of food waste.
Semi-finished and finished plastic products include all 6-digit codes between 39.16.00 and 39.99.99 in the CN/HS nomenclature. These products include goods that consist of 100 percent plastic.
Plastic is a synthetic material that consists of one or more polymers (base plastics) and various additives (auxiliaries). Polymers are organic compounds made up of chain-shaped molecules.
Primary plastic is used on the product side to refer to primary raw materials that have not been subject to significant processing or transformation. In the statistics, primary plastic is defined in the form of a code between 39.01.00 and 39.14.99 in the customs tariff (HS standard)..
Primary plastic in the statistics is assumed to consist mainly of virgin material, but it cannot be ruled out that recycled plastic material/waste may also be included in the quantity of produced, imported or exported primary plastic in the statistics.
The producer responsibility scheme means that producers and importers have a duty and responsibility for their products throughout the entire cycle - even when they become waste. This responsibility has been an important instrument in Norwegian waste policy since the 1990s, and is responsible for reducing the environmental and economic burden of waste treatment by extending producer responsibility to the entire life cycle of the product.
Final treatment is all treatment that is not considered recycling. This primarily includes landfilling and incineration without energy recovery.
Combined Nomenclature (CN) – Classification of goods, with the purpose of meeting the need for customs declaration and an overview of international trade in goods, primarily within the EU.
PRODCOM – Classification of around 4000 codes related to various industrial products and selected services performed by industry within the EU.
Classification of waste (waste standard) – Norwegian standard for classification of waste (NS 9431), administered by Standard Norge. Includes classification of type of waste and treatment.
The Harmonized System (HS) – International nomenclature of commodity codes used to classify border crossings of all goods entering and leaving the country. The classification is administered by the World Customs Organization.
Mainly quantities are given in tonnes
Plastic waste and products
Division for Energy, Environmental and Transport Statistics (425)
National
Annual statistics
Plastic waste is currently reported to Eurostat in accordance with the Waste Statistics Regulation (EC2150/2002).
Collected and revised data are stored securely by Statistics Norway in compliance with applicable legislation on data processing.
Statistics Norway can grant access to the source data (de-identified or anonymised microdata) on which the statistics are based, for researchers and public authorities for the purposes of preparing statistical results and analyses. Access can be granted upon application and subject to conditions. Refer to the details about this at Access to data from Statistics Norway.
The system for assuring the quality of Norwegian official statistics is based on quality requirements in the Statistics Act and in the European Statistics Code of Practice.The annual report on the quality of official statistics assesses compliance with the quality requirements for all official statistics as a whole.
The National programme for official statistics sets the framework for the areas Statistics Norway and other public authorities produce statistics on. The programme defines and outlines official statistics.
Further information about the system for quality in official statistics can be found at ssb.no
Statistics Norway has been working with plastic statistics for a long time and part of the methodology in today's statistics dates back to the early 2000s (Statistics Norway report 2000/15 Waste account for plastic – methods and results for plastic).
Some of the ideas from that time have been preserved until now, including the description of product supply in chapter 3.1. is central to the product side, while other parts have been further developed or discarded.
A more updated version of the Statistics Norway report from the early 2000s is available in Statistics Norway note 2023/35 Plastic account for Norway – preliminary methodological approach and use of datasources. Here the method is described in a somewhat more "hands-on" way as it is implemented in today's plastic statistics.
Statistics Norway's waste account constitutes the main overview of plastic and other waste in Norway today, and covers the waste side of plastics well.
The product side of plastics currently only covers the production of primary plastics, as well as the quantity of imports and exports, but there will be a lot of methodological development here in the future, both internationally, Nordic and nationally.
De viktigste brukerne er departementer, direktorater og forskingsmiljø innen området natur og miljøforvaltning. Statistikken har også en høy aktualitet internasjonalt inn mot FN, Eurostat m.m., hvor plast i samfunnet er ønskelig å få kartlagt i større grad.
Ut over dette tjener statistikken som grunnlag for informasjon til media og andre som er interessert i tilstanden og utviklingen på miljøområdet.
No external users have access to statistics before they are released at 8 a.m. on ssb.no after at least three months’ advance notice in the release calendar. This is one of the most important principles in Statistics Norway for ensuring the equal treatment of users.
The statistics are coherent, and used data from both Statistics Norway's waste accounts, foreign trade statistics, and goods production in industry and mining.
The statistics are developed, produced and disseminated pursuant to Act no. 32 of 21 June 2019 relating to official statistics and Statistics Norway (the Statistics Act).
On the waste side, the Pollution Control and Waste Act (Pollution Act) is also relevant.
This varies slightly depending on the table in Statbank. For the product side, time series are normally 2015-2023, while for the waste side it is 2020-2023.
The figures are published at the country level, and include businesses that produce, export or import plastic in the form of waste or products on the Norwegian market, as well as businesses that generate waste.
Products:
Calculations on the product side are based on detailed data that form the basis for other existing statistics, and primarily include basic data from Statistics Norway's statistics on commodity production in manufacturing, mining and quarrying, to quantify domestic plastic production, and link this with figures on imports and exports from Statistics Norway's external trade in goods statistics.
Waste:
On the waste side, figures from the waste accounts are used combined with selection analysis data collected together with household waste statistics.
To calculate the proportion of plastic in waste that is not pure plastic, plastic factors from various public reports and analyses are used.
The statistics are based on data sources collected via other statistics (mentioned in the section above).
Editing of the figures is limited, as they are normally edited by the statistics on which the plastic statistics are based. Editing is defined here as checking, examining and amending data.
Products:
On the product side, the statistics are based on a general goods supply method, and are based on a simple principle:
Goods supply = production + imports - exports
For goods and products that consist only of plastic, the goods supply will be directly apparent from the equation above, while for products that only partly consist of plastic (together with one or more other materials), the quantities must be corrected with a theoretical plastic proportion, so that the quantity calculated constitutes "100 percent pure plastic".
These theoretical plastic proportions will depend on the product, and these are taken from various external reports in the calculation. These sources are discussed in more detail in Statistics Norway documents 2023/35.
Waste:
On the waste side, figures from the waste accounts are used combined with sorting analysis data collected together with household waste statistics.
To calculate the proportion of plastic in waste that is not pure plastic, plastic factors from various public reports and analyses are used.
Employees of Statistics Norway have a duty of confidentiality.
Statistics Norway does not publish figures if there is a risk of the respondent’s contribution being identified. This means that, as a general rule, figures are not published if fewer than three units form the basis of a cell in a table or if the contribution of one or two respondents constitutes a very large part of the cell total.
Statistics Norway can make exceptions to the general rule if deemed necessary to meet the requirements of the EEA agreement, if the respondent is a public authority, if the respondent has consented to this, or when the information disclosed is openly accessible to the public.
More information can be found on Statistics Norway’s website under Methods in official statistics, in the ‘Confidentiality’ section.
No particular comments
None
PRODUCTS
- Possibility of double counting in relation to (1) primary plastic, (2) semi-finished product and (3) finished product. Since only primary plastic figures have been released so far, this pose a somewhat limited problem, but the more enters finished products, grey zones may arise, and thus also a need to clearly distringuish between these three categories when aggregating the final statistics.
WASTE
- The statistics on plastics are partly based on the waste account, and sources of uncertainty there will also be reflected in the plastic statistics. See About the statistics for the Waste Account.
- In addition, there will be uncertainty in plastic shares and picking analyses that are difficult to estimate accurately.
- Import and export of plastic waste contain some uncertainty. Green-listed waste is based on data from foreign trade statistics (originally customs declarations), but experience has shown that registrations between product and waste can be somewhat "fluctuating", and not always be correctly reported to customs at border crossings. This means that a shipment that actually constitutes plastic waste can, for various reasons, be reported as a product, and thus not be included in the statistics as green-listed waste. So there may be some grey areas here that are not reflected as well in the statistics.
- Avfallsregnskap for plast – metoder og resultater for plast (SSB Rapport 2000/15)
- Plastic account for Norway - Preliminary methodological approach and use of data sources (SSB documents 2023/35)
