The Italian Minister of the Environment, Sergio Costa, will soon inaugurate the ‘Plastic-free Embassy’ initiative being implemented in Oslo. In fact, the Italian Ambassador in Norway, Alberto Colella, has already started to raise the personnel’s awareness on reducing the use of unnecessary plastic. The project was launched on social media and was warmly received. Therefore, the Embassy’s offices have already arranged to replace disposable coffee cups with china cups. Both coffee and tea are prepared with machines that do not use disposable pods. Plastic bottles, actually not much used in Norway, have been banned at the Embassy and replaced by recyclable bottles.
Lunch, following local customs, is brought to the office from home in thermal containers. The use of plastic cutlery is being progressively reduced as well.
Finally, used plastic recycling is very advanced: plastic is collected in specially provided blue containers, and 100% recycled by municipal authorities. “We have just started implementing the initiative – the Ambassador explained – and it will certainly require a bit of work to bring it to completion, but everybody is doing their best.” The initiative will be presented to Minister Costa in Oslo at the beginning of January.
