Tari, the South pays 87 euro more for waste than the North of Italy

Although, in 2023, the percentage of waste sent for recycling has risen to 51% (2 percentage points higher than the year before), Italy is still far from the challenging EU target of 65% by 2035. And the gap with the rest of Europe also remains wide in terms of landfill disposal, with 16% of waste still being disposed of in this way in Italy, against an EU target of 10% by 2035. Ergo: in order to reach the values set at European level, Italy will have to equip itself with an adequate plant system, also to be able to halve landfill disposal in the next 15 years.

This is the snapshot taken by the Green Book 2025, the annual report on the waste sector in Italy, promoted by Utilitalia and edited by the Utilitatis Foundation, produced this year in collaboration with Ispra and with the participation of Cewep (European Confederation of Waste to Energy) and Airu (Italian Urban Heating Association) and presented today in Naples during an event that will be opened by Filippo Brandolini, president of Utilitalia, and Mario Rosario Mazzola, president of the Utilitatis Foundation.

As usual, the Green Book 2025 then provides a detailed analysis of the expenditure incurred by citizens for the service and shows how in the South the lack of facilities causes a significant increase in transport costs and, consequently, in the overall cost of the service. With consequent strong territorial differences between macro-areas: 290 euro per family in the North against 354 euro in the Centre and 377 euro in the South. This is a price gap between the South and the North of 87 euros, which is not matched by a higher quality of service.

Northern regions, in fact, which tend to have higher average percentages of separate collection than central and southern regions, also have a lower level of expenditure for the service. It is no coincidence that, if one examines the relationship between separate collection and the average service expenditure per macro-area of a household relative to a component in 60 square metres, one observes that in the North, where there is a 64% separate collection percentage, the annual expenditure in 2023 was 130 euro per household, substantially lower than that of the Centre (165 euro per capita) and the South (176 euro), which record 54% and 49% separate collection, respectively.

In short, a clear turnaround is needed in terms of plants, also to cope with the increases in both the national production of urban waste (equal to 29.3 million tonnes in 2023, 0.7% more than the previous year) and the percentage of separate waste collection (which reached 67% in 2023, +1.4 points over the previous year, with growth in all macro-areas of the country). "Recycling and energy recovery plants," explained Utilitalia's number one, Filippo Brandolini, to Il Sole 24 Ore, "are indispensable for promoting waste management from a circular economy perspective. The NRP has encouraged the development of recycling plants, including innovative ones, also aiming to rebalance the differences between North and South. Moreover,' he continues, 'waste-to-energy plants are fundamental, as they make it possible to treat non-recyclable materials and recover energy, without hindering separate waste collection, but rather integrating it into a sustainable and efficient system'.