How many Norwegians would it take to pollute as much as the salmon industry?
To a casual observer, Norway’s coastal waters are pristine havens of marine life. But in the depths of its fjords and along the coast, massive amounts of nutrient pollution enter Norwegian waterways. From the southern tip of Norway and all the way up along the coast, fish farms are responsible for most of this.
To put this in perspective, the Sunstone Institute asked a simple question: How many people would it take to produce the same amount of nutrient pollution as aquaculture in Norway?
The findings are stark.
Nutrient overload is a key driver of marine degradation. Today, Norway’s fish farming industry produces several times more nutrient waste than all Norwegians' sewage. And when you dig into the numbers, the regional story is even more lopsided. As of 2023, the aquaculture industry in Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county, produced more than 5,000 tonnes of Nitrogen as waste. In human terms, that’s 15 times the amount of sewage generated by its entire population.
More than 1000 fish farming sites now dot the country, and to visualise just how lopsided that pollution pipeline has become, Sunstone has mapped them. Each orange dot below represents one individual farm location, in which Atlantic Salmon dominates.
By clicking region by region, you can see how much the fish farming industry is polluting, per person, per year, throughout the entire country: