Stinking Naples only tip of EU's rubbish heap
Friday, 25 May 2007
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With no end in sight to Naples' rubbish crisis, fresh questions are being raised across Europe over the continent's crippling reliance on overflowing and unhealthy land-fills.
The European Commission is currently undertaking legal action against 14 member states for failing to enforce landfill regulations, with large fines expected to follow. Similar waste disposal crises have led to strikes and riots in Greece and Bulgaria this year, while Britain was recently warned that landfill capacity will be exceeded by 2016.
Naples' rubbish crisis may worsen tomorrow with the planned closure of the only remaining working landfill in the area. The southern Italian city has been turned into a stinking dump this week as rubbish collectors have gone on strike complaining that they have nowhere to take it. Angry residents have burnt refuse piled up in the streets. Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano, in a letter published this week in the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore, appealed for a quick solution, warning that further delay would "precipitate an ecological and health disaster, with serious economic and labour repercussions."
Collectors have stopped hauling the rubish away because they have nowhere to take it. The government has approved construction of more dumps but there have been delays in getting them working because of opposition from local communities.
Tomorrow, authorities plan to shut the dump at Villaricca, north of Naples, exacerbating the situation, according to the office of the government-appointed "garbage tsar", Guido Bertolaso. The Villaricca dump has collected Campania's rubbish for months and is now full.
The southern Campania region - home to the luxurious Amalfi Coast but also the slums of Naples - has been plagued by a number of rubbish crises in recent years. Dumps fill up, and local communities block efforts to build new ones or create temporary storage sites. In 2004, a rubbish crisis prompted weeks of protests.
The Neapolitan crisis echoes demonstrations earlier this year in the Greek capital, Athens, where mountains of refuse were left to pile up in the streets after industrial action by rubbish collectors. The strike followed claims by municipal employees that they were due bonuses for working with "hazardous materials".
The city's main landfill site in Ano Liosia in northern Athens reached full capacity late last year and authorities have not known what to do with the 6,000 tons of refuse produced by a city of four million people. The site, thought to be the largest of its kind in Europe, violates EU regulations designed to limit the volume of landfill. Environmental studies have already highlighted the damage that rotting refuse has done to the water table and subsoil, creating what researchers have called a "toxic time bomb".
The EU's richer nations such as the UK, Spain and France are also facing severe problems with overflowing landfill sites. The UK dumps more household waste into landfills every year than any other EU country, disposing of 27 million tons annually. Paul Bettison, from the UK's Local Government Association said: "For decades, people have been used to being able to throw their rubbish away without worrying. Those days are now over." The EU has begun to issue significant fines to ease the situation.
Countries with a waste crisis
Ireland
In 2005, more than three million tonnes of municipal waste was generated, an increase of 65 per cent since 1995. The country currently exports hazardous waste.
Bulgaria
Sofia's one and only waste disposal site closed last year amid residents' protests. The city now faces a major waste crisis.
France
Each year, 350,000 tonnes of tyres are produced in France but there is no specific law concerning the disposal of used tyres; 77 per cent end up in landfills or are cremated. Only 10 per cent are recycled and 13 per cent are retreaded.
Spain
Spain recycles only 15-20 per cent of its plastics and creates more than 17.1 million tonnes of domestic waste per year. Of that, 6.1 million is glass and 3.1 million is plastic.
