Il waste treatment it is a real problem to be faced in industrial terms. Certainly this is a major commitment from an ecological point of view, but it is necessary to clarify to public opinion and politicians that the solution does not lie in generic appeals not to consume and even less in relying on the judiciary to deal with real or alleged abuses. One is needed real national strategy which makes it possible to rationally address the problem and respect the commitments signed at European level by 2035.
To do this, you need to understand that the "Circular Economy" is an economic sector of great importance which already today employs 135 people in Italy and which in the next 15 years could grow by 50% with investments of the order of 10 billion Euros.
In conference promoted by FISE – Assoambiente a large and exhaustive study elaborated by Doctor Donato Berardi, director of the REF laboratory, was presented, highlighting the weaknesses of the current strategy followed by Italy, or rather the lack of a real strategy, which leads local and national authorities to pursue only the emergency. But this is not only a losing position from an environmental point of view, but one that discharges higher costs on the community than those borne by other countries, while the benefits that we get in terms of recycled products and energy produced from a rational treatment of waste are modest. waste according to a well-organized industrial cycle.
Already today the sector is worth 28 billion euros of which 11 for urban waste and 17 for special waste. To achieve the objectives that we have set ourselves for 2035, our country has no alternative but to acquire an adequate plant engineering system by building around forty recycling and waste-to-energy plants as well as an adequate number of landfills for waste which cannot be treated in any other way.
The question is very complex given that there are different types of waste that must be treated differently. On the one hand for recycling by encouraging the consumption of this type of material that is already rewarded by consumers with double-digit annual growth, and on the other with waste-to-energy plants that produce energy or hot water used to heat large city districts, as happens in Brescia.
Also us we export a considerable mass of urban and special waste with growing costs and above all with the danger of no longer finding outlet markets given that China and India have already announced the cessation of their imports. We send other waste to be burned in Germany and Sweden, paradoxically in countries generally considered to be at the forefront of environmental protection. But it takes a very long time for us to build a new plant, about 5 years, if in the meantime no other obstacles of a socio-cultural nature arise. And the central problem is precisely the cultural one.
We have a minister who proclaims that new waste-to-energy plants will never be built in Italy, considered for some reason medieval plants, that waste must be combated with the intervention of the Judiciary, so much so that it now forms a working group on asbestos (25 years after the approval of the law on disposal) chaired by the famous Turin magistrate Guariniello.
The president of Assoambiente Chicco Testa summarized the situation by recalling in the first place that we must abandon the "punitive vision" because crime, when it exists, manifests itself precisely due to the lack of legal systems. In short, smuggling thrives where politics does not act and bureaucracy hinders any correct initiative.
Correctly addressing the problem without demagogy can and must. To do this - said Testa - we need a national strategy based on the clarity of the objectives, on the creation of a central control room capable of coordinating the activities of all the bodies that have responsibility for the waste cycle, a national regulator able to operate , economic tools to direct investments and the behavior of private individuals, a strict but clear system of controls.
We in Italy have some strengths: we are not the last in recycling, just think of the Brescians who recycle scrap iron or the rags of Prato, but we are unable to give ourselves a coherent strategy to enhance what must be considered an important industrial sector and at the same time to address an environmental issue which is now considered a priority by a large mass of citizens. Ideological blocks bring only harm. It has been shown that sWithout the new plants we would have to build about a hundred new landfills to sort out all the waste that we do not transform into energy or new products, and to replace the current ones that are about to reach saturation. And this would be a true environmental policy?
