[GreenYes] letter from Paul Connett from Itlay

[RicAnthony@no.address]

First the very best to all for a happy and successful  new year.

In late December I completed my 27th trip to Italy in 10 years.  Most of my 
trips have been organized by GAIA member Rossano Ercolini of the  group 
Ambiente e Futuro based in Lucca, Tuscany, birthplace of the great  operatic composer 
Giacomo Puccini. Rossano is a primary schoolteacher by day and  one of Italy’
s leading anti-incinerator activists by late afternoon. He has  organized 
nearly all my trips to Italy. I simply tell him the dates I can  manage, and at 
which airport I am going to arrive and from which I depart and  Rossano does the 
rest. By the time I arrive he has scheduled an itinerary –  usually from one 
end of Italy to the other. In this instance the trip started in  Milan, went 
onto Florence an then to Lucca, then back to Florence two times –  for two 
major events, about which I will write more below- then onto Cosansa  near Bari 
(on the Adriatic coast) and then on to Pesaro and Fano (further North  on the 
Adriatic coast) and back to Milan and home.

Apart from the wine,  the food, the climate, the scenery, the history, the 
art, the music, the culture  and the people, there are two important reasons I 
keep returning to Italy.  

1. Thanks to a scandalous law passed by the government in the  mid-nineties, 
utilities are required to purchase electricity from incinerators  at THREE 
times the rate paid to fossil-fuel plants. This subsidy has spawned  incinerator 
proposals from one end of the country to the other. These in turn  have 
generated very intense community battles to stop these proposals. Most of  them have 
been successful in keeping the proposals at bay, however as people are  aware 
from their own countries it is difficult to win these battles with  reasoned 
argument because of the role of corruption I the process. Corrupting  local 
officials is something that Italy is very good at! Because of the intense  
opposition being generated it is not at all unusual to find myself speaking to  
crowds over 500 in number.

2.  The good news is that Italy has  developed some of the most 
cost-effective door to door (porta a porta)  collection systems in the world. Communities 
from one end of the Italy have  reached massive diversion rates in very short 
time periods. For example, Novara  (population 100,000) near Turin has reached 
70% diversion in 18 months. Other  smaller communities near Treviso (near 
Venice) and near Salerno in the south  have reached over 80% diversion. In all, 
some 600 communities in Italy are now  diverting over 50% of their waste with 
door to door collection programs. Both  citizens and officials who get involved 
in these programs like them because a)  their cheaper than landfills (and of 
course far cheaper than incinerators); b)  they create local jobs and c) they 
get rid of the overflowing drop-off  containers scattered around town. 

The driving force behind these  door-to-door collection systems came largely 
from the Agricultural school in  Parco Monza near Milan. In the mid- nineties 
farmers approached the school  asking them where they could get more organic 
material to return to their soil.  The institute studied the issue and came 
back with the answer: the organic  material in the municipal waste stream. 
However, to use it had to be clean which  meant it had to be separated at source and 
collected door to door. It also had  to be collected in a cost effective 
manner which resulted in the use of  biodegradable plastic bags made from corn 
starch (tests indicate that they are  90% degraded in 30 days). Italy is now the 
largest manufacturer of these bags in  the world. The individual from the 
Institute most responsible for developing  these collection systems and spreading 
the message across Italy is Enzo  Favorino, whose name some of your probably 
recognize.

I am hoping that  Italy can springboard from this success and move into the 
crucial phase of a  Zero Waste 2020 strategy and that is to link community 
responsibility (which  they can clearly achieve) with industrial responsibility 
which is far more  difficult. I have argued that the way to make this linkage is 
with the RESIDUAL  SCREENING AND RESEARCH FACILITY. Such a building would be 
built immediately in  front of the landfill (no waste can go into the landfill 
without going through  this building) and the residuals (non-recyclable, 
non-compostable and  non-reusable items and materials) would go onto conveyor 
belts where it is  screened. More recyclables are removed, ditto with toxics and 
the dirty organic  fraction is shredded and stabilized biologically either via 
a second composting  operation (or via anaerobic digestion), before it goes to 
the INTERIM landfill.  All of this is being done successfully in Nova Scotia. 
The new component that I  am recommending is a RESEARCH CENTER (possibly 
manned by the local university or  technical school) to study the non-recyclable 
materials to either find local  uses for some of them or recommend better 
industrial design (better industrial  design for sustainability) for them. The 
residuals = bad industrial design. The  message that has to be sent from these 
RESIDUAL SCREENING AND RESEARCH  FACILITIES is that “if we can’t reuse it, 
recycle it or compost it, industry  shouldn’t be making it.”  We need better 
industrial design for the 21st  Century!

Over the last millennium, Italy has produced some of the most  creative 
people who have ever walked on this planet. Today they have some of the  best 
designers in the world. If Italy cannot design waste out of the system,  then no 
one can, except perhaps Japan, but Japan having built 1800 trash  incinerators 
has little incentive to tackle the real problem of resource  management. 
Instead they prefer like the Swiss, the Germans, the Danes and the  Swedes to 
perfect a bad idea: designing magic machines to destroy resources  “safely.”

However, Italian researchers like Dr. Antonetta Gatti and Dr.  Stefano 
Molinari have discovered a huge problem which is going to challenge the  whole 
nation of ever achieving a safe incinerator, and that is the issue of the  
nano-particles they generate. This has spawned a whole new discipline of  
nanopathology.  An excellent review of what looks like an intractable  problem for the 
incinerator industry is reviewed by Cormier and Dellinger and  others in the July 
issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. This article is  an absolute must 
for anyone fighting incineration. It has probably done for the  
anti-incinerator arguments in the 2000s what the post-combustion formation of  dioxins did 
for us in the 1980s. This article should be presented to any  promoters of 
incineration and they should be asked for a response to the  arguments and 
questions that it raises. While they are busy trying to do this,  we meanwhile must 
capture the high ground by making it clear that “even if you  made an 
incinerator safe you would never make it sensible. It simply does not  make sense in 
the 21st century to spend so much time and money destroying  resources we 
should be sharing with the future!” a quote of mine that goes back  several years.

In short, incinerators seek to make the residuals  disappear, Zero waste 2020 
seeks to make them very visible and use them to drive  industrial 
responsibility, which includes clean production, extended producer  responsibility and 
industrial design for sustainability.

Now for those  two events in Florence (Dec 16, 17, 2006).

On the Saturday before  Christmas (Dec 16) groups from all over Tuscany 
participated in a grand march in  Florence in opposition to incineration. The 
slogan: “Non Bruciamoci il futuro”  (“Don’t burn the future”). 

My day began in Lucca where several local  groups met at the railway station 
and about  a dozen of us traveled by  train to Florence  (about 90 minutes). 
When we got out of the train we were  met by another group sporting their 
banner. We went to the front of the station  where a sound truck was blasting out 
Bob Marley songs. We were about the first  there, but it was very exciting as 
more and more groups began to arrive with  their banners, and in the case of 
Greenpeace in their moonsuits.  Groups  came from Castelnuovo Garfagnana; Lucca; 
Capannori; Borgo A Mozzano; Viareggio;  Pisa; Cello-Ponpedera; Grosetto; 
Siena; Poggibonzi; Prato; Casale; Pistoia;  Montale; Agliana; Florence; Sesto 
Fiorentino; Campi Bisenzio; Rufina;  Valdisieve; Greve in Chianti, and Livorno. 

By the time we were ready to  set off the crowd was very large. We were led 
by the sound truck down the road  from the railway station to the Cathedral – 
any tourist who has been to Florence  will have walked down this street.  The 
music bounced off the buildings.  Christmas shopping came to a halt. The police 
did not hurry us along and in fact  even allowed the organizers to halt the 
march at regular intervals and get on  the microphone. By the time we reached 
the Cathedral we heard that the last  people had only just left the station. At 
the Cathedral I was disappointed that  we turned left not right. Right would 
have taken us in front of the Cathedral  and down the biggest tourist street 
in Florence: the one that connects the  Cathedral to the city square where 
Michelangelo’s statue of David stands in  front of the famous municipal building 
(the one with the familiar tower) which  is located next to the Uffizi gallery.

However, the left turn took us  down a rather narrow street with few people. 
However, after a couple of blocks  we took a left turn, then another and found 
ourselves in a very large avenue  going back towards the Cathedral. We 
stopped in front of the Provincial  government buildings and Rossano Ercolini was 
given the microphone to blast the  government for its promotion of incineration 
throughout Tuscany. When we started  moving again it quickly became clear that 
we were going to go past the Cathedral  and down that route I have already 
described. The photographers and TV cameras  were going crazy getting shots of 
the banners in front of the Cathedral. But the  best shots of all were the ones 
they took as we went down that main shopping  street under the splendid 
Christmas lights which arched across the street. These  were the pictures which 
made it into the press the next day (at least three  papers).

When we arrived at the famous square, the banners were formed  into a huge 
circle and peopled gathered in the center. Once again Rossano  addressed the 
crowd. Passionate stuff. Then the march and rally ended with the  showing of a 20 
minute video put together by the Florentine group. The next  day’s papers put 
the crowd at 1000, 2000 and 300 respectively. Rossano thought  it was 
somewhere between 3000 and 5000. Whatever the number the march was huge  success. No 
citizen or tourist in Florence that day would have been left in any  doubt 
that communities all over Tuscany did not want to host incinerators and  that 
they supported a better approach – Zero Waste. I have some pictures of this  
march in jpeg files. If anyone wishes to get copies please let me  know.

On Sunday December 17, in a community  center in Florence called “Il Progresso
” citizens gathered from all over Italy  to attend a national conference on 
Zero Waste. 

When I say all over  Italy I mean it. They came from Turin, Novara, Modena, 
Bologna, Ferrara,  Alessandria, Genoa, Rome, Naples, Acerra, Catania in Sicily, 
Pesaro, Salerno,  and of course from all over Tuscany. The meeting began with 
a short talk from me  on gasification and I made it clear that this is just 
incineration in disguise.  A more honest and appropriate name for this 
technology would be a “gasifying  incineration”, since the gases liberated in the 
gasification step are burned to  generate electricity.  When the gases are burned 
all the same problems  accrue as with a regular incinerator, including the 
generation of the  nano-particles which, because they are so small, can escape 
from even the most  modern particulate control devices. Sadly many officials – 
and even some  “environmentalists” - have been dazzled by the hype 
surrounding the promotion of  this “magic machine.” Currently gasification plants are 
being proposed for Rome  (at the Malogrotto landfill) as well as in many other 
countries. A 3000 ton  facility is proposed for Puerto Rico (at the most 
outrageous location I have  seen for any incinerator). Other facilities are 
proposed for Ottawa and the  Toronto region in Canada. The most upsetting project is 
the facility proposed  for Edmonton’s famous waste recycling center. In fact 
in their stupidity the  Alberta government has put a $20 million subsidy into 
this proposal. What makes  this sad is that this Edmonton recycling center has 
an excellent research  facility and it would have been an ideal place to have 
located a Residual  Screening and Research Facility.  So Edmonton has gone 
from the potential  of being a world leader to one of the world’s sheep.  Perhaps 
we shouldn’t  really be surprised since they have also built the largest 
composting facility  in North America to compost the mixed waste stream (after 
recyclables have been  removed) thus generating a dirty compost that has 
practically no end uses. What  a waste! 

After my little talk the rest of the meeting was devoted to  forming a 
national group to promote Zero Waste. The big discussion was whether  this should 
just be a national organization or whether they should actually form  a 
political party called Zero Waste! That question was not resolved but forming  a 
national alliance was supported 100%. Rallies are now being planned for Venice  and 
Rome to consolidate still further the national movement against incineration  
and the promotion of Zero Waste Italy.

If anyone wants to get more  information about this campaign please contact 
Rossano Ercolini at  <ambientefutoro@no.address>. For those who want to learn 
more about  Italy’s cost effective door-to-door collection systems please 
contact Enzo  Favoino at <favoinomail@no.address>.

Again all the best for 2007. Zero  Waste – Zero Incineration! “Non 
Bruciamoci il  futuro.”

Paul Connett


Ricanthony@no.address
RichardAnthonyAssociates.com
San Diego,  California



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