STORY / PUBLIC SOURCE RECORD
Circular economy: Norwegian technology promotes sustainable use of natural resources
- Published 9 March 2023; updated 21 September 2026; estimated reading time 4 minutes. The article frames circular economy around respecting resource limits, using renewable inputs, extending material life and reusing/recycling products. It notes Norway’s access to fisheries, oil/gas, minerals, forests and hydropower and profiles Norwegian approaches that turn residual streams into feedstocks or products.
- Ocean Forest, founded by Lerøy Seafood Group and Bellona, applies integrated multitrophic aquaculture: it uses phosphorus, nitrogen and CO₂ released by fish farms to cultivate sugar kelp and mussels. The page presents this as producing additional biomass while reducing waste/pollution.
- It says offshore-sector expertise could be applied to deep-sea mineral extraction, while identifying minerals and rare-earth materials as inputs for solar cells, wind turbines, EVs, batteries, phones and power cables. Forest biomass is presented as a renewable alternative to petroleum-derived additives used in products such as adhesives, coatings, cosmetics, cleaners and packaging.
- Borregaard operates a biorefinery and makes Exilva, described as the first commercially available cellulose-fibril additive, from Scandinavian forest cellulose. It also makes bio-based vanillin from Norway spruce as an alternative to oil-based vanillin.
- Waste/resource examples include NCE Blue Legasea and The Life Science Cluster working on marine residuals; Arctic Bioscience extracts omega-3 phospholipids from herring roe, a fisheries side stream; Norilia makes hydrolysed proteins from poultry by-products for human and pet nutrition; and Biovotec uses discarded eggshell membrane to make chronic-wound dressings. The article estimates Norwegian agriculture generates about 415,000 tonnes of residual raw materials a year, much of which is currently used as animal feed.
- The article cautions that harvesting renewable biomass alone does not guarantee sustainable resource use; products and materials also need to remain in use through reuse and recycling. Related industry: Circular economy. Linked company pages include Ocean Forest/Bellona, Borregaard, Arctic Bioscience, Norilia and Biovotec.