In Rome the question ofwaste emergency has been a delicate topic for many years due to the great inconvenience it has caused. But why was it so difficult to manage and dispose of this waste? We tried to understand what the causes were and what the situation is like today in the capital, also discovering the municipal measures to remedy the problem.
Why was there a waste emergency in Rome? The causes
Let’s start by saying that only in 2023 was the total waste produced in Rome 1,600,209.29 tons. It is a figure that corresponds to the waste produced by Milan, Florence and Naples put together, but we count that – as we see in the video – this waste comes from a really large surface area (1287 km², to be precise), and that each of the 15 Municipalities of Rome corresponds, by number of inhabitants, to an Italian provincial capital municipality. It goes without saying that the larger the territory of a municipality, the more complex waste management is.
But beyond the large quantity of waste, the waste emergency was caused by the combination of three problems.
First of all, in recent years there has been a shortage of means to transport waste and ecological operators who collect them. Without them, waste remains on the street, and in such a rapidly expanding city the phenomenon has only spread over time.
The second problem? For years Rome has sent much of its waste into the former Malagrotta landfillwhich was closed in 2013. The waste was therefore sent elsewhere, but it was not easy to choose the alternative systems to adopt to dispose of such a large amount of waste.
The last problem is connected to the second: to dispose of waste it is essential to have systems to dispose of it; without plants the waste remains on the street or is taken abroad at exorbitant costs. Rome has no waste-to-energy plants, and in April last year the only TMB in the Municipality, that of Rocca Cencia. We could therefore say that there was a series of organizational problems that over time became increasingly complex to manage in a city of these proportions. Other large European cities, however, have organized themselves differently to avoid the problem: for example, Paris has 3 waste-to-energy plants, Copenhagen has one 3 km away from the central square and Berlin sends over half of its unsorted waste to the Ruhleben waste-to-energy plant , 14 km from Alexanderplatz.
Who takes care of waste collection in Rome and how it is managed
In Rome, it has been there for almost 40 years AMA company (Municipal Environment Company) to deal with the collection (street and door-to-door) and disposal of urban waste. But what path does this waste take?
As can be seen in the graph in the video, 34% of separated waste is organic, 33% is paper and cardboard, 10% glass, 8% plastic and metals and the remaining 15% is wood, inert waste (materials such as rock, ceramic, bricks) and street sweeping waste (collected from cleaning of roads). The workforce (250,440 tonnes) is sent to two external plants, one in Friuli and one in Veneto. There they are disposed of via biodigesterslarge stomachs with the function of decomposing organic waste, obtaining biogas and fertilizers.
The other separated waste (approximately 494,495 tonnes) comes recycled by type in some plants in Lazio, outside Rome.
But how come the 851,001 tons of waste are disposed of undifferentiated of the capital? There are usually two ways: mechanical treatment (also called biological mechanical treatment) or waste-to-energy plants.
Just over a tenth of this waste ended up in TMB (mechanical biological treatment) of the Municipality, which transforms the waste into two types: materials that can be reused, such as fuels or organic compounds, or waste, which ends up in landfill.
Almost 90% of Rome’s unsorted waste, however, ends up in private treatment plants in Lazio, in Central Italy and abroad, or in private waste-to-energy plants (outside the region), plants that burn waste, recovering the energy generated by the combustion itself. That energy can then be used to heat homes and generate electricity.
What is the current situation in Rome today: difficulties and solutions adopted
In summary, according to the data provided by Love 88% of all waste is disposed of in Lazio, 8.5% in the rest of Italy and 3.5% abroad, mainly in Holland and Germany. To date, therefore, in Rome, all waste finds a place and the situation has improved compared to the past.
This also happened thanks to the hiring of 1000 new employees in 2023 and an increase in the average availability rate of vehicles in service, which went from 50% in 2021 to 75% today with a renewed fleet of 1,735 units for collection and sweeping.
Furthermore, to speed up disposal times the Municipality has planned the construction of new plants: two biodigesterstwo plants for the treatment of paper and plastic and a waste-to-energy plant (the latter will be built in an industrial area in the Santa Palomba area).
