In trash-strewn Italy, a city cleans up

In a region with a chronic waste problem and 12 percent recycling rate, one mayor successfully led a recycling revolution.

By Irene Caselli | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 12, 2007 edition

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Mercato San Severino, Italy - As another summer heats up in southern Italy, the unsorted garbage piling up on the sidewalks is starting to stink. It's a decade-old problem to which locals have resigned themselves. If one sidewalk is too full, they cross the street. And when too much garbage accumulates, they set it on fire.

But recycle? Forget it. Up until recently, no self-respecting southern Italian would partake in what many here deride as an obsessively-orderly and time-wasting foreign habit.

Except Giovanni Romano. As mayor of Mercato San Severino, a town of 20,000 just south of Naples, he set out in 2001 to change the town's viewpoint on the issue. Today, it boasts a recycling rate five times as high as the regional average of 12 percent, and its streets are free of trash.

For over a decade now, boroughs in the Campania region have been battling against waste – a situation that came to a head last month when the European Union (EU) took legal action against the Italian government.

Since Italy declared a state of emergency for its waste in Campania in 1994, the government-appointed garbage commissioner has made recycling a top priority for local governments. But poor infrastructure, economic interests of the local mafia, and local mismanagement have put recycling on the back burner, leaving councils to struggle with their huge waste output.

Get rid of the cassonetti

So how did Mercato San Severino manage to do things differently? It just required some organization, explains Mr. Romano, who is now deputy mayor.

His first move was to get rid of all the cassonetti – the ubiquitous municipal trash cans where citizens can drop off black sacks of unsorted garbage as often as they like.

Instead he set up house-to-house collections – three times a week for organic waste, once for paper and cardboard, and once a fortnight for plastic and tins. Everyone in Mercato San Severino received a calendar with a colored picture next to each date that corresponds to the color of the sack that one is expected to leave outside.

"We have to make citizens understand that waste is not something separate from us that they can get rid of by leaving it in their neighbor's garden," says Romano. "They have to understand that it's a product of their daily life. And the best way to do that is to force them to keep it in their houses."

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