WASTE DISPOSAL: ANTITRUST AUTHORITY TO THE LAZIO REGION, REVIEW REGULATIONS IN ORDER TO AVOID A DISTORTION OF COMPETITION

Report also submitted to the Minister of the Environment and Protection of Land and Sea, the Mayor of the Municipality of Rome, the Deputy Commissioner for Environmental Emergency in the territory of Rome and its province. Move away from a system that actually encourages the transfer of waste to landfills to a system that promotes waste separation and incineration

Review regional regulation on municipal waste management with the aim of reasonably eliminating competitive distortions in the sector. This request is put forward by the Autorità Garante della  Concorrenza e del Mercato in a report sent to the Lazio Region, the Minister of the Environment and Protection of Land and Sea, the Mayor of the Municipality of Rome, the Deputy Commissioner for Environmental Emergency in the territory of Rome and its province.

According to the Antitrust the current regulatory framework has in fact encouraged waste disposal in landfills which, even from the point of view of competition, represents a system for waste management that is the least favoured: it does not allow any type of economic advantage to be derived from waste and constitutes therefore a social cost both environmentally and from an economic perspective. On the contrary waste separation can activate several downstream industries, bring about the expansion of as many markets and access by operators who would otherwise remain excluded. Even energy recovery that would activate a single sector, and precisely the production of energy (and/or heat), might have a positive effect on this market.

In the Lazio region current regulation has instead led to an excessive reliance on disposal in landfills which is the final destination for 71% of municipal waste (according to data issued by Ispra). Waste separation has not been adequately promoted and instead a system has been favoured that is based on a plant layout characterized by a large processing capacity of unsorted waste (mechanical biological treatment plants). At the same time the system to authorize incineration plants, which does not allow unsorted waste to be burnt directly, has not allowed these installations in the Lazio region to serve as a competitive constraint to the disposal of waste in landfills that has instead taken place in other regions in Italy. In addition it should be pointed out that both installations that transform mixed waste into waste fuel as well as the same incineration plants operate at reduced rates, thereby encouraging further the disposal in landfills of unsorted waste.

Landfill disposal of unsorted waste as well as the transfer of this waste to mechanical-biological treatment plants takes place against payment by participating local municipalities of a fee that is defined by the Region on the basis of the statement of costs (estimated and final accounts) that are presented by the company that operates the installations. Even this regulatory activity, however, is carried out with results that in some instances bring about discrimination and serve as barriers to competition. There is, for example, no determination of regional tariffs for mechanical-biological treatment plants owned by AMA, with possible negative consequences at least in terms of lack of controls, on the cost of treatment and subsequent disposal, that AMA passes on to citizens.

According to the Antitrust, the choice over the years in favour of the disposal of waste in landfills compared to the recovery of materials from differentiated waste and energy from mixed waste, hindered the achievement of an integrated framework for the efficient management of municipal waste, where different systems for management of urban waste, wherever possible, compete against each other. It follows that the rate paid by citizens in the Municipality of Rome for waste management is among the highest in Italy and second, among the larger cities, only to that of Naples (data provided by the Agency for the control and quality of local public service in the Municipality of Roma Capitale).

Rome, 09^th September 2013