Illegal burning of waste, no more liability for lack of supervision

As a result of the reform of environmental offences, which came into force a few months ago, there is no longer a form of responsibility for failure to supervise in the offence of illegal combustion of waste. This is emphasised, and it is the first intervention of the Supreme Court after the entry into force of Decree-Law No. 116 of 8 August 2025, in Judgment 39162 of the Third Criminal Section. The ruling also clarified that, in order for the offence to be committed, it is not necessary to have previously been charged with the offence of abandonment or uncontrolled deposit of waste: it is sufficient that the conduct has as its object waste abandoned or deposited in the absence of any control.

The appeal lodged by the defence of a defendant sentenced on appeal, in April, to two years' imprisonment for the offence provided for in Article 256 bis of the Consolidated Law on Waste (Legislative Decree 152/2006) was rejected: the man, a businessman in the Messina area, had been held responsible, as principal and together with two employees, for having set a fire to polystyrene waste abandoned and deposited in an uncontrolled manner on a piece of land he owned.

Among the elements asserted by the defence, the non-existence of a charge of failure to control, since the burning of the waste was rather to be considered an autonomous initiative of the employees and in any case had been set on an area distant from the place of business activity, far from the possibility of effective supervision by the entrepreneur.

The Court of Cassation, however, rejected the appeal, emphasising, among other things, that liability for failure to supervise can no longer be configured, given that the conduct is now devoid of criminal relevance after the reform of environmental offences carried out with the 'Terra dei fuochi' decree . Previously, in fact, the rule provided that 'the owner of the company or the person in charge of the activity, however organised, is also responsible under the autonomous profile of the omitted supervision on the work of the material authors of the crime, however traceable to the company or the activity itself'.

The judgement, then, also clarifies that it is not indispensable, prior to the charge of the offence, for there to be a declaration of abandonment of waste or of the realisation of an uncontrolled deposit of waste. The punishable conduct, in fact, is not 'configured on the basis of the presupposition of the accusation of another previous offence, but only requires, for the completion of the case, that the conduct concerned waste abandoned or deposited in an uncontrolled manner, that is, as observed, without complying with the fundamental prescriptions and precautions to be observed for the protection of health and the environment'.