The international consortium led by NORCE Norwegian Research Centre was awarded a research grant of NOK 7,4 M by the Research Council of Norway for a project to study cross-border business and innovation opportunities in waste management in the Barents Region and High North.
Waste management in the northern latitudes is often more challenging than in the more central regions. Under the Arctic climatic conditions with large distances between settlements and to the recycling facilities, and relatively small markets and volume of produced waste, there are special needs for developing new innovative solutions for waste management.
The waste management companies need to address technological issues of sustainable processing av waste, including incineration and reuse/recycling as well as use of energy and effectiveness, in an Arctic context. Furthermore, the sustainable waste management includes co-operation with Arctic local communities to ensure understanding and acceptance of customers and users, for instance in following the sorting guidelines. These challenges are not limited to one country, and are to a large extent shared by the northernmost regions in all Arctic states. This also creates opportunities for knowledge and experience sharing and collaboration on region-tailored solutions, including new business possibilities.
The need for in-depth examination of such opportunities was the primary motivation behind the project Waste Management in High North - new cross-border business opportunities (WANO) 2021-2024 that has been awarded funding by the Norwegian Research Council NFR. The study looked at the cross-border business and innovation opportunities in the Barents Region and the High North within waste management. Moreover, the analysis will also include the specific (geo)political conditions, as well as social aspects of cross-border cooperation in the High North.
Special focus was given to the analysis of municipal and industrial waste management in North Norway. Data on waste management collected in Northern Norway was analysed together with Nordic benchmarking, including cases from Finland and Sweden.
The WANO project aimed at producing new knowledge on the development of sustainable waste management in the northernmost regions in the High North. Moreover, the project’s overarching ambition is to build sustainable business-to-business and business-to-research networks, both nationally and internationally.
NORCE acted as the Lead Partner of the WANO project. Other research partners included the Nordic research institute Nordregio in Stockholm. The non-research organisations and industry partners had an important role especially in the empirical part of the study. Remiks, RaskRetur, and HRS Narvik, waste management practitioners in North Norway, provided their valuable expertise and networks to the WANO project and actively participated in project implementation.
