The second reason the landfills are full is that an attempt was made to solve the problem with incinerators, which many experts consider extremely harmful. According to a European norm, waste that, when burned, produces energy should be incinerated. To achieve this result, however, the waste must undergo a very complex process. Early in the process there must be separate collections to exclude all trash to be recycled. Plants for the production of RDF, refuse-derived fuel, must eliminate moisture from the solid waste, shred the material, and compress it into so-called ‘eco-bales’. Almost immediately, however, the eco-bales produced by plants in Campania were no more than ‘bundles’ in which waste was crammed as it arrived, ‘as is’ so to speak. Moreover, the energy-recovery incinerator in Acerra did not begin operation until eight years after eco-bales began to be produced, and it only works in fits and starts: designed to burn 2,000 tons of garbage, in September it was only able to burn a little over 500 tons.

Even the geography of Campania’s interior has been modified by the eco-bales. Travelling through the area between Naples and Caserta you can see huge black and white pyramids. They tried to dispose of them in the North and abroad, but nobody wants them because they are not composed properly. It would take fifty-six years just to get rid of the eco-bales accumulated to date. These stacks of eco-bales also contain moisture, which over time has fermented. There’s no way of knowing what is actually inside them: there could be hazardous gases. They would have to be opened, taken apart and reassembled.