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ENVIRONMENT

Why Trento is ranked as Italy’s ‘greenest’ place to live

Trento was named as the most environmentally-friendly place in Italy by a new report, which urged other cities to follow its example.

Published: 24 October 2023 16:19 CEST
Why Trento is ranked as Italy's 'greenest' place to live
The city of Trento is regularly ranked among the best - and least polluted - places to live in Italy. Photo by Joshua Kettle on Unsplash

Despite “slight improvements” over the past year, most Italian cities continue to face major problems with smog, traffic, water wastage, and other environmental issues, according to a new report from Italian environmental watchdog Legambiente published on Monday.

The 30th edition of the annual ranking, titled Ecosistema Urbano 2023, however highlighted some exceptions and named Trento and Bolzano the first- and second- most environmentally-friendly cities out of the country’s 104 municipal capitals.

READ ALSO: Why is air pollution in northern Italy so bad?

They were followed in the ranking by the nearby cities of Mantua, Pordenone and Treviso.

The ranking was based on five main categories: air quality, water usage, refuse, transport, and the environment.

Trento took the crown – overtaking last year’s champion, Bolzano – due to a drop in levels of nitrogen oxide in the air, and lowered water consumption and waste production, the report said.

The capital of the autonomous province of Trentino-Alto-Adige, which borders Switzerland and Austria, Trento is known as Italy’s ‘Silicon Valley’ because it is home to a number of innovative industries and tech-based businesses.

Both Trento and Bolzano, which are relatively wealthy compared to many other parts of Italy, also regularly top rankings of overall quality of life in Italy.

READ ALSO: Why Trento and Bolzano are rated the best places to live in Italy

Mayor of Trento Franco Ianeselli tweeted on Monday: “A big thank you to all the people who work every day to improve our city.”

Having “courageous and visionary” mayors is precisely what sets some cities apart from others, said Mirko Laurenti, who leads Legambiente’s Ecosistema Urbano project.

“The best way to respond to urban emergencies” elsewhere is to follow the example set by these mayors, he said.

The “only sustainable way to truly relaunch the country, starting with the cities,” he said, involves planning urban spaces of the future with “fewer cars and less polluting vehicles, more sustainable transport, a circular economy, and more intelligent and connected infrastructure.”

Whilst the news was positive for the north, and particularly the north-east, Italy’s major cities and southern regions fared less well.

The Sicilian cities of Palermo and Catania came joint last at 105th, while Milan ranked 42nd and Rome 89th.

According to Legambiente, work on improving sustainability in Italy’s cities has been “stagnant” for the past 30 years.

Italy’s motorisation, or car ownership, rate “remains, as thirty years ago, one of the highest in Europe: 66.6 cars per 100 inhabitants,” Legambiente noted.

The amount of refuse produced has increased in that time, it added, and public transport use is far below European averages and falling – with the number of journeys made by public transport in Italy overall dropping by almost a third since 1994.

READ ALSO: Why electric cars aren’t more popular in Italy

“Cities must be rethought as engines of change,” stated Legambiente president Stefano Ciafani, adding that they need to be made “livable and on a human scale”.

Better infrastructure is needed, he said, urging improvements to reduce waste in the water distribution system, and an increase in the number of electric vehicle charging stations, among other things.

“We are able to do it, but we need that political will, at a national and local level, which has been lacking so far and which becomes more and more urgent year after year,” he said.

The report came a month after environmental data gathered by the EU-wide Expanse project showed northern Italy, and in particular the Po Valley and surrounding areas, had the worst air quality in Western Europe.

Data showed more than a third of residents in the area spanning Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto breathed air that was four times above the World Health Organization’s limit on PM2.5 – tiny airborne particles mostly produced from the burning of fossil fuels.

Proposals to curb pollution in industrial parts of northern Italy have long faced heavy opposition from business groups and politicians, who say doing so would impact the economy.

In the most recent move, Milan’s mayor announced a contested plan to limit traffic in the city centre from 2024 to help combat air pollution.

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ENVIRONMENT

OPINION: Why Italy lags behind Europe on green policies – and things aren’t changing

With climate protests by young Italians and talk of clean energy policy, will Italy finally change its ways and catch up with other European countries? Silvia Marchetti argues a much bigger cultural shift is needed before Italy could truly go green.

Published: 16 May 2024 10:50 CEST
OPINION: Why Italy lags behind Europe on green policies - and things aren't changing

There’s a lot of talk about environmental-friendly practices and spreading awareness on climate change, but I must admit Italians are perhaps the least eco-conscious of all Europeans. 

We struggle to keep up with the rest of Europe. From buying more bottled water than almost any other country to repeatedly delaying a ‘plastic tax’ and dumping on beaches and in parks, it’s part of a general cultural attitude which has very little ‘green’ in it, even though the pandemic and soaring energy costs have pushed a minority of Italians to become perhaps a bit more careful. 

Too many Italians just have that ‘che me ne frega’ approach (meaning ‘I really don’t care’), which gets on my nerves and is quite ingrained in the general mentality. 

When I used to live in Holland back in 2002, there were drinking water fountains everywhere, people filled their own portable insulated bottles which were not made of plastic, and which seemed to me so cool and fashionable.

While in Rome we have the famous fontanoni (historical water spouts), locals either use their hands to drink, or still buy glass and plastic cups and bottles to fill and then throw away. 

When it comes to recycling waste, only half of Italy does it properly, while the Baltic countries are the most efficient waste-wise among the 27 members of the European Union. 

I live north of Rome, in the countryside, and differentiated waste disposal services arrived in my comune just six years ago, while at my seaside house south of the capital, this happened only last year. In Rotterdam, where I lived during university, citizens had been recycling waste since at least a decade earlier. 

READ ALSO: Why Trento is ranked as Italy’s ‘greenest’ place to live

Some 25 years ago, when I was in Geneva, people walking their dogs would scoop up their pets’ poo with recyclable gloves and place it in neat plastic bags; that’s something you’d see hardly anyone do even nowadays in Italy.

I’m at times ashamed of saying so, but we have really bad habits – like keeping the tap water running even when you don’t need it, such as during one-hour showers or while brushing teeth, turning the lights on at night in the garden when everyone is at home and no guests are expected, and buying endless motorini (scooters) for the kids and then one car per adult family member.

The Italian love of cars results in heavy traffic and dangerous levels of pollution – but will this ever change? (Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO / AFP)

I think this is all due to the fact that most Italians are very showy, even in energy consumption. Keeping house lights or car usage down to a minimum would imply to neighbors a state of precarious wealth, if not almost poverty. 

There’s another factor that plays a major role. Italy, as opposed to other European countries, has always heavily relied on gas and oil consumption, not on alternative green energy that still sounds quite futuristic. This dependency on fossil fuels will likely lead to our demise if we don’t act.

READ ALSO: Italians and their cars are inseparable – will this ever change?

The post-pandemic funds given by the European Union should boost investments in alternative and green energy, but the effects will only be seen in the long run.

In order to have a positive impact, the money must be efficiently spent. Almost 37 percent of a total €191 billion of European aid is expected to go into funding green investments in Italy over the next few years. 

But it all reads very vague at the moment, and I’m afraid the Italian approach might change only slightly, no matter the ambitious government plans. It’s more wishful thinking. 

In the rest of Europe children are taught about climate change and how to adopt good practices in everyday life. I have friends in Belgium whose kids read about recycling plastic and reducing weekly the number of plastic water bottles they buy.

READ ALSO: What is it with Italians and bottled water?

In order to have a radical change in Italians’ attitudes, environmental awareness must be spread inside schools and among children. It really depends on the future generations.

The younger generations, born in an era already marred by environmental damage, are the only ones in Italy who can really ‘go green’ in everything they do and consume.

Recent protests by student climate change activists in Italy, even if small compared to those staged across Europe, are a sign of a changing mentality among youth.

But in order to further spread awareness, a more pro-environmental education is paramount.

Unfortunately though, there is no political debate around improving education on environmental issues in Italy, mainly due to a lack of political wisdom or forward-looking strategy.

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