So they end up underground. There no one sees them, no one can control them. The conscience silenced by the blindfolded of a society that consumes and pollutes as if there was no tomorrow. It does not matter if poisons capable of devastating water tables and subsoil end up inside those huge "holes", nothing simpler than to pour any kind of waste into the heart of the earth, preferably dangerous. As if the deal concerned only those few gentlemen engaged in the most nauseating traffic, that of the most invasive waste of society.

Other than "circular"

Yet for years, decades now, rivers of ink have flowed on the circular economy, that of reuse, of a production that leaves no stone unturned to recover any residue that would otherwise pollute and devastate the environment. Everyone talks about it, there are even those who venture into primates as "recyclers". The reality, on the other hand, is quite another, sequenced by numbers that tell an opposite story. Calculations hidden in the maze of those who should scream and pursue them, rather than omitting them in the oblivion of indifference. If there is a land that has always been impregnated with the overwhelming essence of myrtle and juniper, with unique and Mediterranean scents par excellence, that is Sardinia.

Violent assault

The assault, on the other hand, right here, is violent, underground and in many ways supported. The primacy this time is carved in numbers to make you shiver, all enclosed in the algorithms of the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection, Ispra. The data are stacked by the thousands in Excel tables where everything appears complicated, as if it were only stuff for insiders. In that vortex of the latest report on waste published by Ispra, however, a reality emerges that could be silently perceived but for which there was no objective and irrefutable confirmation.

Cloaca of poisons

Let's start from the summary: in less than three years Sardinia has been transformed into a real national sewer of hazardous waste. Proportionally, the absolute number one in the disastrous ranking of hazardous waste stored on the island. What is most dramatic, however, is something to make one shudder: the land of the Nuraghi is by far the second largest Italian region for the absolute disposal of hazardous waste. The comparison with the first Region, however, does not hold up in the least. The ranking of hazardous waste thrown underground sees Lombardy, the most populous and industrialized region in Europe, at the head. Sardinia, on the other hand, is marked by one of the lowest European population densities, certainly one of the poorest, and with the lowest production impact in the country, on the other hand, is in second place. Lombardy, with over 10 million inhabitants, recorded, in the latest Ispra report on hazardous waste, a landfill of 288,000 tons of special hazardous waste.

215 thousand tons of poisons

Sardinia, with one million and 650 thousand inhabitants, sent, in the last survey of 2018, the beauty of 215 thousand tons of dangerous poisons to landfill. The most alarming fact, however, is in the dynamics of these data. In the last three years Sardinia has had an increase in hazardous waste buried in landfills that is unprecedented and unparalleled in Italy. While everywhere the burial of poisons has been drastically reduced, on the island the hazardous waste has grown by 99%. A frightening increase, not justified and not justifiable, if not with an import from the rest of Italy to Sardinia of a gigantic quantity of poisons. In 2016 108 thousand tons of hazardous waste were "hidden" in landfills, in 2018 they became 215 thousand.

The doubling

This fact doubles the avalanche of poisons buried in the landfills that, from north to south of the island, welcomed poisons from beyond the Tyrrhenian Sea with open arms and open wallets. To understand the dynamics it is enough to examine the data of four of the main Italian regions. In 2016, 225 thousand tons of "dangerous" were disposed of in Piedmont, in 2018 they became 134 thousand. Emilia Romagna went from 106,000 to 64,000, Lazio was zero and remained zero. Lombardy went from 291 thousand to 288. Tuscany, on the other hand, had the most consistent reduction: from 130 thousand tons to just 5. In Sardinia, however, no.

The Sardinian primacy

The record of more than 99% of hazardous waste is much more than just a perception. The “illegal” transfer of continental waste to Sardinia is, in fact, directly connected to the substantial reductions in the disposal of hazardous poisons in the other regions which, having not decreased their production assets, have certainly decided to move their hazardous waste elsewhere.

Tribal landfills

The scenario is eloquent, indelibly marked by the gigantic quantities of poisons that Ispra has recorded in Sardinia in the last three years. All certified data, recorded and processed according to the analysis parameters of the Higher Institute. In the most advanced context of the circular economy, landfills are the ring to be eliminated, the most tribal one of the waste disposal system. The accumulation of dangerous poisons in the “hole” or in the “embankment” constitutes, in fact, the most consistent environmental aggression with very serious dangers of contamination of the surrounding waters with harmful effects also on human health. “Sealing” the waste, worse the dangerous ones, underground means setting off a time bomb that sooner or later will have harmful repercussions on the environment. It is for this reason that the other record recorded by Ispra is equally disturbing: Sardinia is the Italian region with the greatest number of landfills ever.

More sites on the island

Ispra's data are on stamped paper: in this case too the number of landfills decreases throughout Italy and increases in Sardinia. In 2016 in the Peninsula there were a total of 350 sites for special, hazardous and non-hazardous waste, in 2018 they became 310. In Sardinia, despite the large number of landfills, a new "powder keg" of poisons increased from 40 in 2016 at 41 in 2018, the last year of Ispra survey. To understand the evolution in the most industrialized regions, just think that in Piedmont from 2016 to 2018 it went from 33 landfills to 22, in Lombardy from 29 to 24, in Lazio from 19 to 16. For the Isola dei Nuraghi, therefore, double record, on the one hand the first region for the number of landfills and on the other the only one to grow in the number of sites destined for the disposal of new poisons. The analysis is not complicated: in other regions the landfills close them, in Sardinia they open. Along the boot the quantities of hazardous waste are drastically reduced, while on the island, on the other hand, they are doubled. Numbers that frighten and tell a shocking reality with a devastating photograph of the environmental risks that Sardinia is running, the most delicate and fragile on a naturalistic level.

Special waste pitfalls

To all this there are other relevant data: the latest survey shows that almost one million tons (951,000) of special waste were disposed of in landfills. This too is a quantity that is out of any proportion compared to other realities. A waste sector that has repeatedly proved not to be transparent, stating that the most efficient way to eliminate toxic waste is to reclassify it as non-toxic. Therefore, in Sardinia the alarm is well beyond the guard threshold. Hazardous waste on the island is therefore increasingly a life-and-death issue, a decisive indicator for deciphering society, peoples and the economic activities that characterize it. After all, it is no secret that every civilization has the poisons it deserves or suffers in silence, as is the case in Sardinia.

Mauro Pili

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