The Ecomafia report is produced every year by Legambiente to analyse and share figures on environmental crime in Italy and to place the magnifying glass over the tricks used by criminal organisations to redirect shipments to uncontrolled plants and destinations where environmental protection is not guaranteed.
The Ecomafia report is produced every year by Legambiente to analyse and share figures on environmental crime in Italy and to place the magnifying glass over the tricks used by criminal organisations to redirect shipments to uncontrolled plants and destinations where environmental protection is not guaranteed.
On National Legality Day, celebrated in Italy on 21 March, it seems appropriate to focus on this type of environmental crime too, which causes serious harm and fuels real economic and environmental dumping against specialist operators who comply with rules and regulations.
According to the 2021 report, the pandemic did not stop environmental criminals and, when faced with fewer conducted checks, there was a slight overall increase in environmental crimes (+0.6% in 2020 compared with 2019), while arrests in the waste cycle increased (+15.2%).
How do you tackle this emergency? In its focus on “Mafia & Rifiuti” (Mafia & Waste) addressed to the Italian Parliament in 2019, the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate reported two critical issues in the waste cycle where action would be needed: on the one hand, an over-expanded supply chain that makes authorisation procedures to dispose of waste complicated and cumbersome, and on the other hand, insufficient facilities to complete the management cycle, which increases disposal costs and forces the waste to travel great distances across the region. These phenomena encourage the infiltration of criminal gangs.
For FISE Assoambiente too (the Italian Association of Environmental Service Companies), it is essential to increase the amount of legal processing plants to bridge the current gap facing demand, which is exploited by people who create shortcuts to dispose of waste.
Specialist operators have the responsibility to guarantee the environmental safety and correctness of every phase of operations to be monitored in order to ensure the right final destination for waste. Only careful industrial planning and scheduling can cover the deficit in controlled disposal and processing plants which Italy needs, in a way that permanently improves the recovery and processing steps of material with a view to a circular economy.
