garbage, italy & europe

here is another interesting point (thanks to eugenio's post!)

"... How has it been possible to produce millions of tons of 'garbage balls' without the legal and technical requirements to be burned? Even if the burner in Acerra was open, it wouldn't solve the problem.

This is a contraddiction that is not answered by those who blame the environmentalists... But the discussion must be deeper.

Because it appears clear that the current debate is about the emergency in Campania, where a common effort has to be put in order to give dignity back to the people, but it is also much more general. And it concerns, in my opinion, the huge amount of money given during the last years to those people in charge of burning the waste... i.e. the idea that garbage is a renewable energy.

As usual a comparison with Europe helps us understanding the Bizantine-like Italian events.

The fans of burners say that these plants exist throughout Europe. True. They have been there for long time and there are new generation ones. But they are called burners and not 'termovalorizzatori' (Italian word transl as thermo-improvers). And the laws ruling them are very strict, and they are the laws about waste, not those about energy.

They burn something, the left overs of the very end of a separate collection of waste, which is still defined as waste and not emphasised as energy source. They are forced to produce energy, but no way to get funding for that, pretendind it is a renewable source of energy (apart from the organic part).

European rules are very clear and strict about that... the waste politics have been clearly hierarchical since 1975. First, reduce the amount of waste, then recycle and use it again. Get rid of it is the last step and burning the very last. With mandatory energy recovery, but still accounted as a means of getting rid of the garbage. It is still under debate whether including this into the recover category, but with a mandatory and very high energetic efficiency.

Because goods and recovered materials have a much higher energetic value than that one could obtain through burning them. And since Europe does not work with chats, but with thermodynamics, the hierarchy is respected."

from "Dietro l'attacco agli ambientalisti c'è la lobby dei Cip 6", Roberto Musacchio
Liberazione, 10-1-2008