Containers filled with Italian waste are loaded onto a ship in the Tunisian port city of Sousse, on February 19 2022. © Anis Mili, AFP
Tunisia was victorious this weekend in a protracted David versus Goliath rubbish battle against Italy. On Saturday, a consignment of 7,900 tonnes of toxic waste illegally sent by Italy to Tunisia was sent back where it came from after an almost two-year legal wrangle spearheaded by small local environmental NGOs.
With its extensive white sandy beaches, sparkling turquoise sea, unbroken sunshine and lavish resorts, the pretty Tunisian seaside city of Sousse is best known as a holiday destination. But it has recently become famous for a much smellier reason: Since 2020, more than 200 big shipping containers filled with 7,900 tonnes of Italian toxic waste have been stuck in limbo in a port warehouse.
Between the end of May and the beginning of July 2020, 282 containers were exported by Italian company Sviluppo Risorse Ambientali (SRA) from the port of Salerno, in Italy’s Campania region, to this Tunisian port city. The Tunisian company importing them, Soreplast, declared to customs that they contained scrap plastic left over from manufacturing processes, which Soreplast said it would then recycle. But they were revealed to instead contain household and hospital waste, which is legally prohibited from being imported in Tunisia.
The Italian company SRA was established in 2008 through the sale of a branch of another company, Fond.Eco. Both companies ended up at the centre of a judicial investigation in 2016 conducted by Salerno's Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate. Tommaso Palmieri, who runs both companies, was accused of leading an organisation that recycled bulk waste. SRA is also one of the companies included in an Italian parliamentary report on the link between the waste industry and organised crime.
€5 million contract
The containers were the first shipment of a €5 million contract to dispose of 120,000 tonnes of Italian waste in Tunisian landfills. Soreplast was being paid €48 per tonne of waste.
213 of the containers were stored at the port in Sousse, the remaining 69 were sent to a warehouse outside the city. The containers and their contents rotted away in these warehouses for over a year until they were officially seized by the Tunisian government last July. They – and their pungent odours – were to remain in place, however, for another seven months.
On December 28, 2021, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi di Maio went to the capital Tunis for talks with President Kais Saied, in particular to address this thorny issue. At the end of this meeting, the Tunisian presidency published a Facebook statement, stressing "the need to accelerate the repatriation of the waste as soon as possible".
An agreement was finally signed on February 11 to return the rubbish to Italy. The Tunisian ministry of environment said in a statement posted after the meeting on its Facebook page that "the signing of this agreement is part of the continuity of the consultation process between the two countries, which began in 2020". The statement continued: "Among other things, this agreement provides for the immediate return of 213 containers in the first instance, out of a total of 282 containers, after 69 of them were involved in a fire."
The ministry added that consultations are continuing with regard to finalising the return of the remaining waste after containers were damaged by a fire, which broke out in the importers' warehouse in the governorate of Sousse. They did not elaborate on the state of the containers post-fire or when any subsequent transfer might take place. France 24 - link - Sophie Gorman - link - more like this (Italy) - link - more like this (Africa) - link - more like this - link
The containers were the first shipment of a €5 million contract to dispose of 120,000 tonnes of Italian waste in Tunisian landfills. Soreplast was being paid €48 per tonne of waste.
213 of the containers were stored at the port in Sousse, the remaining 69 were sent to a warehouse outside the city. The containers and their contents rotted away in these warehouses for over a year until they were officially seized by the Tunisian government last July. They – and their pungent odours – were to remain in place, however, for another seven months.
On December 28, 2021, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi di Maio went to the capital Tunis for talks with President Kais Saied, in particular to address this thorny issue. At the end of this meeting, the Tunisian presidency published a Facebook statement, stressing "the need to accelerate the repatriation of the waste as soon as possible".
An agreement was finally signed on February 11 to return the rubbish to Italy. The Tunisian ministry of environment said in a statement posted after the meeting on its Facebook page that "the signing of this agreement is part of the continuity of the consultation process between the two countries, which began in 2020". The statement continued: "Among other things, this agreement provides for the immediate return of 213 containers in the first instance, out of a total of 282 containers, after 69 of them were involved in a fire."
The ministry added that consultations are continuing with regard to finalising the return of the remaining waste after containers were damaged by a fire, which broke out in the importers' warehouse in the governorate of Sousse. They did not elaborate on the state of the containers post-fire or when any subsequent transfer might take place. France 24 - link - Sophie Gorman - link - more like this (Italy) - link - more like this (Africa) - link - more like this - link
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