The latest alarm comes from Unindustria, the association of companies in Lazio: “The plastic emergency in our region threatens to paralyze the entire recycling chain and the urban waste collection service,” emphasizes Gianni Mannucchi, president of the Environmental Services section of Unindustria. “The main cause is the lack of outlets for recycled material, penalized by the competition of low-cost virgin raw materials imported from abroad, which is reducing the storage capacity of the plants. In Lazio, this emergency adds to the critical issues that have affected other flows for months, including those of separate collection, for which there are insufficient plant solutions. This results in accumulations, slowdowns, and higher costs due to recourse to destinations outside the region, with a further environmental impact related to transport,” adds Mannucchi.
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For some time, the supply chain has been reporting a decrease in the capacity to process plastic that started upstream, from recyclers, and now has visible consequences throughout the system and has filled storage centers. The numbers presented at the plastics table on July 28 speak of a loss of processing capacity of about 12,000 tons per month in the last year (the 2024 Ispra census counted 384 plants, for a sector of 953,198 tons). The most affected regions: Campania, Lazio, Puglia, Marche, Emilia-Romagna, and Sardinia, with reports also coming from Piedmont and Veneto. And a picture of plant shutdowns that “derives from both accidental causes (fires) and those related to the lack of market outlets or authorization/revamping delays,” reads the minutes of the meeting. The fires during the summer affected several recycling and storage plants. In the late July meeting, the Ministry of the Environment, precisely to avoid saturation, with consequent collection blockage, and the risk of fires, had proposed, among immediate measures, regional interventions for the increase and rationalization of storage and temporary interventions by consortia and companies to mitigate the collection blockage.
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Meanwhile, on September 16, the national consortium for the collection, recycling, and recovery of plastic packaging, Corepla, at the forefront of managing the emergency, was placed under judicial administration by the Milan Court for one year for negligent facilitation in favor of a member company (Synextra of Corsico, Milan) under criminal proceedings for offenses in the management of plastic waste. According to the investigations, the consortium’s managers did not carry out effective and adequate controls to neutralize the risk of illegal waste management. The provision states that “Corepla did not effectively control the waste management chain, verifying the real entrepreneurial capacity, organization, and operation of Synextra Spa and more generally of the selection and storage centers,” failing to take “timely and adequate initiatives” to neutralize or contain the risk of illegal waste management.
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