Italian Trash Problem Is Nothing New

"The traffic, normally chaotic, here and there is stopped by overturned garbage cans and the trash that blocks the streets. The garbage - thousands of tons of it - has gone uncollected for three weeks, because all the available landfills are full. The evil odor of decomposition and burning waste moves down the hills of refuse and slides along the streets, enters shops, doorways, houses."

"The garbage in the streets is nothing new; it has decades of history behind it. That organized crime controls the garbage industry and runs a staggering number of illegal dumps, everyone has known for a long time. That a wide range of poisons are buried in Campania, the region around Naples, and that this multiplies by the hundreds the usual risks that human life is exposed to, is known to both ordinary citizens and government officials. That illegality flourishes, and very profitably, under the umbrella of the law thanks to the intervention of politicians of every stripe is not even arguable - it's a fact, something that's been happening forever."