Those who have profited from this state of affairs are those in the business that has the highest earnings in Campania: the Camorra. There is no crisis in the ecomafia business. A fact to keep in mind: in 2009 alone, according to data from the environmental association, Legambiente, the ecomafias realized an illegal accumulation of resources worth over 20 billion euros, about a quarter of the Mafia’s total proceeds. The ecomafia’s earnings are equal to that of Telecom Italia, ten times that of Benetton.

There is a precise moment when this all began. In Villaricca, a town near Naples, a meeting took place in 1989 that included Camorristi from Pianura, contractors, masons, politically connected friends and landfill owners. It is the baptismal dinner of the ecomafia system. The Camorra declares that it is willing to provide land and pits to dispose of toxic waste. In exchange it is prepared to give up part of the money it receives from contractors and donate it to the politicians who will then allow unrestricted dumping, turning a blind eye. Campania is chosen because it is a primary crossroads for international waste routes to Africa. Passing through Naples, toxic waste is dumped in the Maghreb, in Liberia, in the Horn of Africa, in Somalia. So why not let it stay in Campania? You save a trip, you earn more.

In Campania every inch of land has its own specific consignment of waste. A farmer, while ploughing his land, might even find shredded liras, dumped illegally. Cemeteries are also known to do periodic exhumations, removing what younger gravediggers call the arcimorti (ultra-dead): those who have been dead for over forty years. They are supposed to dispose of the remains, along with all other cemetery material, through specialized enterprises, but the cost of disposal is extremely high. So the cemetery directors give the gravediggers a kickback to handle it by burying everything in the Caserta countryside. All you’d have to do is dig around with your hands or a kitchen spoon and you’d find skulls and ribcages. So many of them were dumped, as the Carabinieri health-protection services in Caserta discovered in February 2006, that now when people pass by they make the sign of the cross, as if it were a cemetery.

Roads are also built with toxic waste material. The expressway that connects the Palma Campania interchange with the towns of the Vallo di Lauro – a one-and-a-half-mile escape route in case of an eruption by Vesuvius – was impounded by Nola’s carabinieri in March 2010: the spring rains had caused asbestos fibres to emerge from the asphalt. The 162 acre-feet of asphalt had been obtained by mixing crushed asbestos, hazardous special waste and compost from Anthony Iovino’s dump.