Rome is threatened with a smelly summer: in many quarters of the Italian capital, rubbish is only collected sporadically. Mayor Virginia Raggi seems overwhelmed.
If it weren’t for crying, it would be laughing: In some quarters on the Roman periphery, several Tempo 30 zones have recently been created – not in front of kindergartens and schools, but near rubbish bins. The reason: The overflowing rubbish bins attract – in addition to seagulls and hosts of rats – meanwhile also many wild boars, which search the uncollected waste for food. When the animals cross the streets in packs, they pose a danger to motorists and cyclists. A Vespa driver has already died in a collision.
Expensive ecological madness
The Eternal City is permanently on the verge of garbage collapse: In the tourist historic center, the authorities usually manage to keep the situation under control, but outside the Aurelian city wall, garbage collection works more badly than it should and sometimes not at all. The failure of a mechanical waste sorting system or the closure of an emergency landfill is enough for the garbage bags to pile up again in the neighborhoods. Such a scenario – an acute garbage crisis like the last one in winter 2018/2019 – is now blooming again for the Romans – and probably for the rest of the summer.
The city authorities on the Capitol Hill were panicked by a decision by the Emilia-Romagna region: They let the authorities of the capital know a long time ago that from tomorrow Tuesday they would no longer be ready to take over 200 tons of garbage a day from Rome as before and burn. This is where the core of the problem lies: Rome, a metropolis of three million people, whose residents produce 4,700 tons of waste every day, does not have a single waste incineration plant.
A large part of it is simply exported to the rest of the country: 180 large trucks leave the city every day to cart Rome’s rubbish, often over hundreds of kilometers, to disposal facilities. This is not only ecologically insane, it is also expensive: in the past five years, garbage exports have cost the city a billion euros. With this sum, Rome could have built two to three modern, own incineration plants. But Mayor Virginia Raggi doesn’t want to know anything about it – for her and her five-star movement, these ovens are the work of the devil because of the exhaust gases. Raggi’s recipe: waste avoidance, waste separation and recycling 100 percent. Only: in the five years since their election, the proportion of separately collected rubbish in Rome has remained consistently low.
The sad truth is: During her term of office, which will end this autumn, 42-year-old Raggi did not even begin to develop a concept for solving the garbage crisis. And household waste is not the mayor’s only “disposal problem”. In May, the Eternal City made headlines around the world because the authorities were no longer able to bury their dead: More than 2,000 deceased waited for weeks in the cold stores of the cemeteries (and some outside) until they could finally be cremated. The same municipal department that would also be responsible for garbage disposal is responsible for the debacle.
Garbage crisis, funeral disaster, burning buses, millions of potholes in the streets: this performance record does not prevent the mayor from running for another five-year term in the autumn. Raggi’s chances of being re-elected are not very good – but whether another candidate could get the garbage crisis under control? Ideological concerns about incinerators are also widespread in most of the other parties. The only candidate who has spoken out in favor of building new waste disposal and incineration plants is Carlo Calenda. The former Minister for Economic Development in the government of Paolo Gentiloni is considered a blatant outsider.
