There are 89.199 trucks that transport waste along the boot every year: 244 trucks a day, of which 187 departing from only two regions, Lazio and Campania followed - but at a sidereal distance by Liguria, Puglia and Tuscany. A movement that weighs on users' bills e harms the environment. This is the message that emerges from the latest Position Paper “Waste management. Support the Regional Plans with a rational and shared approach”, curated by Laboratory on the local public services of REF Ricerche.
First point: the costs of waste transport and tourism have a significant impact on users' bills. Among the regions with the highest cost of the service, the study identifies Campania (447 euros a year for a typical family of 3 members) and Lazio (383 euros a year): the two regions with the highest deficit, respectively 900 and 700 tons of unsorted waste and organic waste shipped to other regions or abroad each year. Even if it must be said that Lazio weighs above all the disastrous management of the Municipality of Rome. The cost in the bill is also very high for the inhabitants of Liguria: 374 euros, and Puglia and Tuscany also go above 300 euros. The most "cheap" of the Regions that are forced to export waste (the others are Sicily, Abruzzo and Valle d'Aosta), is Basilicata, where this mechanism affects the single family for 229 euros a year.
La management of undifferentiated waste it is the first example of the critical issues that cross the peninsula. The balance on the plant situation is measured by the difference between the tons of unsorted waste produced and managed in each region. Lombardy (with a positive balance of 908.665 tons) and Emilia-Romagna (+385.164 tons) have a management capacity higher than their respective production. Conversely, Campania (-500.586 tons) and Lazio (-498.175 tons) are the regions with the greatest management imbalance. The Community directives ask to reduce landfill disposal to 10% by 2035. Lombardy (4%) and Emilia-Romagna (9%) have already achieved this goal: landfill disposal is effectively residual.
Lazio and Campania total a management imbalance of around 1 million tonnes: considering the size of the deficits, it does not seem rash to state that the lack of self-sufficiency in disposal in these regions is the main cause of waste tourism in the country. The organic waste "trade balance" of the single regions measures the movements from the South to the North of the country. Veneto (+410.859 tons), Lombardy (+356.320 tons) and Friuli-Venezia Giulia (+233.101 tons) are realities in which the trade balance of the workforce shows consistent positive balances: they import waste from other regions to treat it. Conversely, Campania (-414.936 tonnes), Lazio (-219.906 tonnes) and Tuscany (-201.410 tonnes) are the regions that export outside the region due to the lack of plants.
The balance is influenced by the level of interception of the organic fraction. In Italy the average is 121 kg/inhabitant for 2019, with a regional data gap between 185 kg/inhabitant in Emilia-Romagna and 64 kg/inhabitant in Basilicata. The high figure of Emilia-Romagna or Veneto (156 kg/inhabitant) demonstrates that the former has plant equipment that is adequate for needs, while the latter has a capacity that is even higher than the requirement, signaling an industrial vocation of the area that can be put at the service of regions with insufficient or missing implants. On the contrary, the positive balance of Molise and Sicily is affected by the low degree of interception of the organic fraction, respectively equal to 77 and 78 kg/inhabitant: this means that the start of differentiated waste collection is hindered by the same lack of plants which allocate the collected waste.
“Il waste tourism between regions causes huge environmental impacts. Many regions of our country have not indicated the plants capable of combining the recovery of materials with the production of energy from waste, with the consequence of exposing the territories to the risk of periodic emergencies and exports of waste to other regions or abroad" , commented Donato Berardi, Director of the REF Ricerche think tank on local public services.
