Trash Crisis Over Says Berlusconi

The local news is NOT as optimistic as this report. Trash is much better but there are many unhappy folks due to the "opening" of new landfills. These are adjacent to some suburban areas and there have been many protests.

Berlusconi committed that, if elected, he would have this solved in months... it will take years! They have brought in their National Guard for trash and crowd control.

Friends who are in the travel business STILL are not taking their groups through Naples. They do Pompeii, Positano, Sorrento, etc. but still bypass Naples. Our embassy friends were there last weekend (headed to the Navy base commissary) and drove through downtown and some of the outskirts. Still a "dirty" city in their opinion but no huge piles of trash as there were months ago.

I hope they have turned the corner... but they still DO NOT have a long-range solution. These new landfills are projected to be filled in 1-3 years, depending on who you listen to... Unfortunately this issue has reached international proportions and now the Italian government is just starting to realize how this "bad press" impacts their tourist business, and thus their economy. It was a huge factor in the recent local and national elections (April).

But I'd say Berlusconi is a little premature to say, "it's over."

Ciao,
Ron

We were in Naples in early July, and we didn't see any trash piles. In fact, we saw trash receptacles every block or so, and, much to our surprise, most were not full. Granted, we were only there for a few hours, and we were primarily on the main streets between the port and the National Archaeological Museum, so this might not have been representative.

Driving to Vesuvius was a different story. We saw HUGE trash piles EVERYWHERE.

I'm fairly skeptical of any claims Berlusconi makes (does that make me a 'proper' honarary Italian? LOL). Much like a rock dropped in a lake, I think the trash issue has rippled out beyond Naples. The 'ripples' i.e., trash piles have been contained at their point of origin, but are still affecting the outlying areas. They really need to get it together enough to emphasize recyling as opposed to filling up landfill after landfill.

I didn't really notice any issues in Rome beyond the usual city litter last year, and Florence was quite clean from a garbage point of view. How likely is it that the garbage gets out of hand in other areas of Italy? Or are the Napolitians and their neighbors just really bad at trash management?

The problem is that in Naples the trash collection has been run for years by the Camorra, the Napolitano mob. It is a problem that no one has wanted to look into too deeply or deal with, but now it seems like they have no choice. As far as it affecting other cities, well, all the garbage dumps in Europe are filling up but not for reasons that have anything to do with the Camorra. Other cities in Italy haven't been affected by this problem, though there was a lot of anger up North by people not wanting the trash from Naples to be disposed of up here.

Yes, it's a Mafia thing that's hard to relate to for us non-Italians. It's been building up to this point for 14 years and it's very complicated. Anyway, the garbage is being kept away from most of the tourist sites because the government knows what a huge part of their economy is based on tourism. Sadly the biggest impact is on the Italians themselves.