The day in which Italy will have resolved the waste problem, it will be like liberation from a ghost. No one (or perhaps everyone) will be able to take credit for having freed the country from a nightmare that has become structural. Moreover, in 2023 there is still debate about whether or not to build modern buildings structures of disposal and with ready money. Other countries have done better by creating a market and making good profits with waste of all kinds.
In 2021 in Italy they were collected 19 million tons of garbage. 40% was organic waste (Forsu) destined to be disposed mostly in the Northern Regions. The most evident symptom of a territorial imbalance due to the lack of facilities and short-sighted political choices. We understand that the Italian organic waste market is in a phase of great uncertainty, says lo studio entitled "Organic waste market. Current situation and open challenges” published by the Ref Research Center edited by Andrea Ballabio, Donato Berardi and Nicolò Valle.
The refusals between disputes and provisions of the Authorities
The rubbish is brought to the North as there is a more competitive industrial system that mixes together material recovery and energy production. That's no good. But where does the uncertainty come from? Let's start with rules. They are compromised by diverging judgments, regional decisions and interpretations. A luxury, so to speak, that we shouldn't afford. The Regions have precise responsibilities with regard to the so-called “minimum treatment facilities”., according to a classification made by Arera.
The context is such that it can no longer be postponed "a state clarifying intervention which measures the residual needs and indicates the Regions and the plants necessary to rebalance the territorial differences". Everything moves within a market with waste that goes from the South to the North without modernizing the system, paid for by the citizens. "In our country, the management of organic waste sees the coexistence of a defined market structure ex lege in the Consolidated Environmental Act with a regulatory and administrative practice that is not always consistent" write the three researchers the Refs.
According to the Consolidated Law, free circulation on the national territory is always permitted for organic waste, in order to favor its recovery as much as possible, favoring treatment close to the place of production”.
In 2021, the Arera established the criteria for access rates to treatment sites. The iPlants were divided into three categories: "minimum" and "integrated", with regulated tariffs for those who dispose of and "additional" plants, excluded from the regulation of tariffs and free to compete on the market. Or how much do you pay on this site? The Regions have classified their plants but have had appeals.
What does the National Waste Program say?
When in 2022 the National Waste Management Program (Pngr) also useful for accessing Pnrr funds, the concept of "minimum installations" has not been clarified. The Plan speaks of self-sufficiency within a territory that produces garbage, but it also says that the Regions can agree each other and move the waste within a macro area.
At this point, after the rules, comes the practice. If the Waste Plan represents an incentive for Regions with plant deficits, it has also “laid the foundations for a restrictive and erroneous reading of the principle of free movement, in contrast with the primary law, as noted by the Competition Authority which has oriented the choices of the Regions in terms of "minimum installations", write Ballabio, Berardi and Valle. The Authority deems the use of "minimum plants" acceptable with the application of regulated tariffs. But la removal of waste streams from the market, by paying, it is justified only for a limited time to achieve territorial rebalancing". If it lasts long, the free market for waste disposal is gone. Indeed, where plants have treatment capacity adequate to demand, "minimum plants" cannot be justified.
Administrative judgments and uncertainties in the field
The sentences of some TARs have established that the Arera has attributed powers to the Regions that the Legislator has not assigned them. In other words, it exercised “a power outside its regulatory mandate” while the National Waste Plan was a great opportunity to overcome doubts and disputes. Only after that could the Arera intervene.
Let the State, then, clarify the border "Between market/competition and regulation/privatization in the treatment of FORSU, imposing a reflection on the desired and desirable market design", says the study. In the Pnrr - and beyond - there are very strong interrelationships between the disposal of organic waste and the production of biomethane. We need to develop a national strategy that also channels the contents of the Pngr, bringing it to the benefit of an ecological supply chain. Public resources must be “useful for territories that are really in deficit and make up for real market failures.“
The North macro area, equipped with a surplus plant engineering and a plurality of operators, must be left to market competition. Perhaps the tariffs for disposal charged to citizens will be able to decrease. The plants that are located in macro areas in deficit and in Regions equally in deficit "they should take the form of "minimum installations", so as to support the closure of existing gaps". The researchers of the Ref have put their finger on a historical sore in Italy. Among all thunderous government announcements we haven't heard anything on the subject. Yet the Court of Auditors a few days ago in his report on the state of the Pnrr, he asked Parliament to speed up the projects for 2,1 billion euros for waste management and recycling in strategic sectors. I wonder if Palazzo Chigi will have taken note of this specific point. The Ref study can help to understand even better.
