Littering in nature: – Snuff rubbish on Besseggen:

– The white bag snuff is so very visible on the hiking trails, says Ørjan Venås to Dagbladet.

He has just been on this summer’s first patrol trip over Besseggen.

During the season, he will go the same trip about 50 more times.

– We cleaned a lot on the paths here the first two years, but now people are mostly good at cleaning up the rubbish after themselves.

– But the bag snuff remains, he says.

Ørjan Venås runs Gjendeguiden, which arranges trips in the popular tourist destination, and he is behind the Besseggen patrol, which has been patrolling the mountains since 2017 with the goal of preventing unnecessary rescue operations.

– My impression is that there is more focus on snus littering this year, says the telemarking.

Last year, he rebuked tour snus users who spit out bag snus on the ground when they walk on Besseggen.

– People think it disappears

– Due to covid-19, we can not pick up the snus by hand, so we have walked the paths with a gas burner and burned both toilet paper and snus bags.

This year, Venås hopes that people are more aware.

– This was talked about a lot last year, and it was shared on social media. I hope people have taken hold of it, he says to Dagbladet.

Trip for beginners

The Besseggen patrol does everything from following people down the mountain, to lending walking sticks and giving tenacious and encouraging words to those who have underestimated energy consumption or fitness.

– What we see that is a little worrying is that people take Besseggen as their first mountain trip. It may be a slightly new phenomenon, says Venås to Dagbladet.

Refser «snusere»: – Cursed shit

He is not alone in this impression: Dagbladet wrote last year that the 330 Squadron sees one significant increase in both experienced and inexperienced hikers on Norwegian mountain peaks.

Every year, about 60,000 people make the trip across Besseggen.

The season is underway when the tourist cabin opens and Gjendebåtene starts running on 12 June. Last season day is October 9th.

One in four young people sniffs daily

The proportion of young people who sniff daily continues to rise, according to figures from Statistics Norway (SSB).

Last year, 27 percent of those born in the 90s sniffed daily. In 2008, 16 percent of those over 15 born in the 90s sniffed.

Warns against record-long queues

– The increase is so large that it can not only be linked to the decline in smoking among people in the same birth cohort, Statistics Norway states.

Only 3 percent of the age group smoked daily last year. This is a decrease from 8 per cent from 2008. In the same period, the proportion of “occasional smokers” born in the 1990s has increased from 8 to 16 per cent. It includes party smoking.

Statistics Norway sees no indication that snus use among young people in Norway is declining – on the contrary.

– For the entire population between the ages of 16 and 74, snus use has increased in the last ten years, but seems to have stabilized at around 12–14 per cent since 2017, Statistics Norway writes.

Holiday numbers worry: – Hurt the soul

– A garbage can

When the snus problem at the popular tourist destinations became known, the Swedish snus giant Swedish Match went to the mountains to clean both Besseggen and Gaustatoppen for snus bags.

– Snus is the only product that comes with its own rubbish bin in the packaging, and yet it is a rubbish bin. Of the over 1000 items we picked on the trip last year, about half were snuff bags. It is a miracle for me, says communications manager in Swedish Match Norway Erlend Wessel Carlsen tells Dagbladet.

At the same time, he sees this as an acknowledgment that the snus lid on the snus box is not enough to avoid littering.

– Absolutely damn good with rubbish

– Last year’s clean-up trips gave more flavor, and the plan is to carry out ten such clean-up actions this year.

Swedish Match also has plans to make rubbish bins from used snuff boxes and place them in the most vulnerable tourist destinations.

Due to the pandemic, the trips or the rubbish bins have not yet been completed.

– But that does not mean that we will not be able to complete the trips. I’m sure we’ll get something done in collaboration with Gjendeguiden so people do not have to wade in snuff bags this summer as well.

Worried about explosive travel sales

The municipality may ask you to clean up

Municipalities can order the person responsible for the littering to clean up after themselves.

The Norwegian Environment Agency defines individual objects that are thrown away or lost, such as snuff bags, as litter or waste that goes astray.

According to the Pollution Control Act, the municipality is the authority for littering and is responsible for following up littering cases in its municipality.

If you notify the municipality of littering, the municipality is obliged to assess and process the inquiry and possibly follow up the case further.