It’s complicated, but I would like to try to tell a never-ending story, the story about the waste in Naples. There are kids sixteen years old, born in Naples, who have never seen their city free of garbage. The emergency has gone on for sixteen years, to the point that even the word ‘emergency’ is no longer adequate. Because an emergency is a single incident, an exceptional moment. If it’s repeated year after year it is no longer an emergency. In Naples, it has become the norm, almost a material given: in summer it’s hot, in winter it’s cold, every year there is a waste crisis.

Everywhere I go I’m asked the same question: how is it possible that the waste problem in Naples hasn’t been solved? There are tons of images, tons of instances that pass before my eyes when I talk about this subject, images and instances that everyone in my region has seen and experienced. For example, air conditioners have suddenly begun appearing in all the houses in the Naples and Caserta area, in rural and provincial towns where they had never been used before, because the stench was so strong that it drifted into the houses in summer, forcing people to keep the windows closed. And I remember an incident in 2008, in Maddaloni, in the province of Caserta, when schools were closed, postal carriers folded their arms, and outdoor markets were cancelled. A schoolteacher from Boscotrecase told me that she leaves the house in the morning and drives to Naples, where she teaches, carrying with her the smell of garbage which has saturated the car seats and her clothes, causing the students to make fun of her.