Naples garbage still a problem?
 

Is there still a trash problem in Naples?

When are you going?

For most people, trash is not a deal breaker about Napoli. Even without mountains of trash, Napoli is a chaotic city with lots of pollution, graffitti, dog poop, cigarette smoke, noise, petty crime, heartbreaking poverty on display and a lot of other things that make it not Capri. I repeatedly go despite those things because the city is thrilling, crammed with to-die-for art and jaw-dropping history and it has fantastic food. It is one of the most rewarding of all European destinations for a traveler.

But if it would bother you to be around a lot of garbage, Napoli has cyclical problems with get ride of it. It if is gone today, it might be back tomorrow, so you can't plan a trip to Napoli around the idea you only want to go if they've solved their garbage problem.

Well said, zeppole.

I'm absolutely not a Naples fan.

But I was surprised by the rubbish a couple of months ago. Not by its presence (lots), but by how little it mattered.

It was ugly. And that was it.

No maggots, no smell, no used syringes that I could see. Just heaps of soggy paper.

Maybe we caught it on a good week (though God knows how the place would look on a bad one). But I'd put it around priority number 10 million on any list of changes I'd be fighting for if I were a Naples city councillor.

From what we've seen in our nine years here on Ischia (from where, of course, almost every scrap of rubbish is carted to the Neapolitan mainland for recycling, destruction or burial), the problem seems to have two distinct causes...

- almost annual disruptions (at least under previous administrations) whilst new disposal contracts weren't being renegotiated... in the attempt, presumably, to move things along?

- surrounding Comunes closing the door to deliveries of garbage from Naples, for a host of reasons; some political, some for justifiable concerns... but others that appeared little more than blackmail.

The second is already a big problem for Naples, where so much of the territory is already developed - but their neighbours' refusal to cooperate is something that other Italian cities are also going to face. As their populations grow, there's an increasing need for land.... not only for the dumping of trash, but also for industry, homes and even - eventually - cemeteries!

Indeed, it's not impossible that some aspects of the government's new Manouvra are aimed at transferring powers to the metropoli - away from sparsely-populated 'nimby' villages and towns within their catchment areas.

But either way it's more than a little early for guessing how things might be during a vacation intended for April or May of next year!

Peter