
Problems
Causes of the waste management сrisis in Rome, Italy
The history of Rome’s dysfunctional waste management is decades long. Massive Malagrotta landfill, once the largest in Europe, and the only site devoted to the city's garbage disposal for about 30 years was unfit to treat waste, leading to its closure in 2013. Most of Rome’s garbage is shipped to other Italian regions or abroad. Only 40% gets collected separately and recycled. The capital exports 1.2 million tons of its garbage every year. Remaining half-million tons it sits uncollected for weeks. The rotting smell emanating from overflowing bins has attracted the hungry families of boars, violent sea gulls and rats which come in the search for food. Agricultural association Coldiretti estimates there are in the region of 23,000 wild boar around the city. Causes of the waste management сrisis in Rome, Italy: ● Closure of several landfills outside the region where the refuse of the metropolis of three million inhabitants is disposed of. Rome has been left with no major site to dump or treat the 1.7 million metric tons of trash it produces every year. ● No real strategy for recycling, as successive mayors from different parties all proved incapable of solving the waste emergency. ● Collection, treatment and disposal of Rome’s garbage has always been in the hands of a small group of private interests — sometimes, according to prosecutors, colluding with organized crime. ● A dispute over building a new incinerator for the city.
Gallery
5Timelines
2023
April
Rome will send 900 tonnes of rubbish to Amsterdam every week starting in April. The Italian capital is drowning in trash. The city’s four million residents produce more household waste than it can dispose of. Starting in mid-April, a special-purpose train will transport some of this rubbish 1,700 km north to Amsterdam for incineration. This is the most “environmental” solution, authorities have claimed. Rome cannot process the waste it produces. Last year, a huge fire heavily damaged the city’s largest waste processing company. A new installation will not be operational until at least 2026. The energy produced by burning waste can be harnessed, whereas the slow release of energy from rotting trash cannot. Part of the Amsterdam deal includes a condition that the energy generated from this rubbish will heat homes in Amsterdam. The Waste Energy Company (AEB) already does this with around 30,000 homes in the city. Neither option is great for the planet, though. A sustainable approach involves minimizing the amount of trash produced in the first place.
2021
The contract with Abruzzo hasn't been renewed, so Rome sometimes even takes its garbage to Austria and the Netherlands because it has nowhere else to go.
2018
Prosecutors sequestered the landfill — owned by a businessman dubbed “er monnezzaro,” or King of Garbage — for failing to contain its toxic spillage.
2017
More than 70,000 tons of Roman trash had to be trucked to Zwentendorf in Austria for incineration. That left some 1.6 million tons to be disposed.
2013
A gigantic landfill outside Rome called Malagrotta (‘evil grotto’) was Europe’s largest until the EU forced it to close for poisoning the water table.
1990
Moving trash retention from each household managing a small amount of trash in the home, to the city authorities managing large amounts on the street. This was done by the installation of dumpsters on most street corners.