In Italy garbage is  being sorted all over the country but every region has its own way of sorting the garbage. Firts of all the some data on the recycling situation in Italy:

• in the north 64% of waste is recycled
• in the center 45.7%
• in the south only 31.3% of waste is recycled.

 As regard the composition, in Italy the total waste is divided into: 41.2% organic waste, 25.2% paper and cardboard, 15.6% glass, 6% plastic, 6% metals, 4.8% wood, 1.2% others.

Regarding the garbage disposal process it is a good result to be able to state that in Italy in 2016 only 5% of garbage goes to landfill… but the situation is not as golden as it seems. In fact 433 thousand tons of garbage are exported every year to Hungary and Austria.

With reference to the collection of garbage, in Italy today it is no longer collected on the street but  with the ‘’door to door’’ process:

 with which the ecological operators go home to collect the waste accumulated in bags, baskets or other containers supplied to the residents. At this point the main techniques used in Italy to recycle garbage are 2:

• ECOLOGICAL ISLAND, as a guarded and fenced area present in various municipal administrations and aimed at recovering cumbersome, ferrous material that will not be accumulated in landfills.

• COMPOSTING, which produces the so-called ‘’compost’’, also used as fertilizer. It can be domestic, community and industrial. These last two types provide for the intervention of man who, through particular systems, accelerates the biological degradation process.

Obviously unauthorized landfills exist, in particolar in the south where the collection of dangerous garbage is a big business for the mafia and for the corrupt administrations. In recent years, many illegal underground landfills containing dangerous garbage have been discovered. Given the danger of this waste now the territories around these landfills are called ‘’ terra dei  fuochi’’.

I can not speak all over Italy, but I can certainly say that in my town is a habit for people to properly handle garbage and it isn’t normal to throw away the garbage just in the middle of the street: theoretically if the police see someone to throw away the garbage in the middle of the street, then the police should fine this person but unfortunately this does not happen and for this reason some people (not the majority) throw the garbage in the street.

Personally  I have an environmentally conscious way of life because I recycle garbage every day both at home and abroad ( but unfortunatly in Ukraine this is not always possible). I’m doing this because Iam conscious that a correct environmentally behavior is fundamental to give a beautiful future to me, to my children and in general to our planet!

DANIELE ROCCHI,
volonter of World cleanup Day in Poltava