A recycling cycle full of holes – Europe is sinking into yoghurt pots, milk cartons and shampoo bottles

Berlin Small bits of plastic are stuck to his shoes as Kenneth Bruvik trudges through the sand on Norway’s west coast. On a cold April morning, he remembers coming to the small beach outside Bergen for the first time to collect plastic. “I cried,” he says, recalling seeing the bottles and tote bags strewn across the beach and gathered between crevices. Where the water grinds them down until only shreds remain.

In Norway, the plastic collection system works well. But what good is the Bruvik if people dispose of their rubbish somewhere else instead of in the rubbish bin on the floor? The waves wash up here too, from Portugal, Spain, Great Britain or North America. As Bruvik stares at a small mountain of plastic bottles, he demands: “To everyone who produces these single-use bottles, stop it!”