Our waste keeps going up in smoke, dispersing into the environment in the form of toxic particles. And this time we are not talking about waste collected illegally, buried and set alight as in the Terra dei Fuochi: it is in fact waste collected through regular channels at treatment and disposal facilities that is also burning. According to the final findings of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into illegal activities connected to the waste cycle and related environmental offences, in the last three years alone there have been 261 fire incidents at Italian disposal facilities — practically one every three days. And the trend is not declining; quite the contrary: 2017 was the year with the highest number of cases.

Why does waste catch fire?

According to the commission, the reasons are multiple, but they can be summed up as follows: the facilities are old and few in number, those that exist are often overloaded, and inspections are few and far between. As a result, in most cases fires break out through negligence, due to poor management or infrastructural shortcomings. In some cases, however, it has been established that fires were started deliberately, for so-called "liberatory" purposes: in short, to free up space for new waste. As Chiara Braga, the rapporteur of the report, puts it, "we have established the existence of a strong correlation between fires at facilities and the failure to properly close the waste cycle".

The problem affects the whole of Italy, from north to south: the report documents some of the most significant inspections carried out over these three years, from that at the Bedizzole landfill in the province of Brescia, where three fires broke out in succession during a closure period, to that of Bellona in the province of Caserta, where between 2012 and 2017 some 4,500 tonnes of waste went up in flames — a third of which was special waste — in an area that was never remediated. These sit alongside equally serious cases in Mortara (Pavia), Vidori (Treviso), Cinisello Balsamo and Pomezia, where just a few months ago the fire at the Eco X plant containing asbestos caused a public outcry. The situation is particularly serious in the north, however: the geographical distribution of fires at facilities shows a prevalence of events in the northern regions (47.5 per cent of fires, compared with 16.5 per cent in central Italy, 23.7 per cent in the south and 12.3 per cent in the islands), which, Braga explains, "beyond the widespread overloading of facilities, indirectly confirms at least a reversal of waste flows compared with the historic emergencies that have in the past affected the southern regions": in substance, the north has a greater concentration of facilities, which receive large volumes of waste from central and southern Italy, the reverse of what used to happen.

Justice struggles to intervene

The other major problem, according to the commission, is the way in which the justice system responds. For the report, which cross-referenced fire data supplied by the regional environmental protection agencies with case files opened by prosecutors, the judicial response proves inconsistent and not particularly effective in its outcomes: of just under half of the events reported as potentially deliberate (54 out of 118), an investigation was opened. And half of the criminal proceedings brought were initiated against unknown persons who, in almost all cases, remained unidentified through to the case being closed. Only in five cases out of 261 was the offence of arson — deliberate or negligent — punished, while in other cases the fire was at least the occasion for establishing other environmental offences arising from irregularities in facility management: failure to carry out remediation, poor maintenance, procedural irregularities.

Critical issues and solutions

The commission therefore directs its criticism first and foremost at the vulnerability of the facilities, which are often not equipped with adequate surveillance and monitoring systems; at the scarcity of management inspections, which leads to the possibility of facilities becoming overloaded and consequently to an increased fire risk; or to material that cannot be managed, which then gives rise to deliberately set fires of a liberatory nature, accounting for up to 20 per cent of the total; and finally at the inconsistency of the investigative and judicial response, to address which "the sharing of investigative protocols would be particularly useful". Above all, however, what is needed is decisive action on waste cycle management to ensure its proper closure.