Italy's best recycling town isn't in the north. It's Domicella

The top of the table does not speak Venetian. Second place goes to Ripacandida, in Basilicata, at 98.48%. Behind it comes Spinete, in Molise, at 97.13%. Fourth is Cimitile, on the edge of Nola, at 96.77%, and only in fifth does the first northern town appear: Mordano, near Bologna, at 96.55%. Sinagra, in the Sicilian Nebrodi hills, is sixth at 95.72%. The best Veneto has to offer is Zenson di Piave, in the province of Treviso: 94.02%, fifteenth place.

This does not mean Veneto recycles badly. It means something else. From fifteenth place downwards the table fills up with towns from Veneto, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, and that depth is where the north's real strength lies. But not the summit. The summit belongs to villages of a few thousand people scattered across Irpinia, Basilicata and Molise.

The cities are where the map turns over. Venice sorts 63.72% of its waste — thirty-three percentage points less than Cimitile, which sits in the province of Naples and has neither a canal nor a tourist to manage. Milan is at 63.33%, Bologna at 72.81%. Rome stalls at 48.03%, Naples at 44.38%.

The best-performing provincial capital is Treviso, at 86.78%. That is still eight points below Domicella. Among Italy's largest cities, in short, not one comes close to the top ten: from north to south, the big cities all recycle less than the villages do.

But the comparison that matters is not Domicella against Venice. It is Domicella against its neighbours.

Within the same Vallo di Lauro, inside a radius of seven kilometres, sit towns that share the same geography, the same catchment and the same provincial service. Lauro sorts 53.98% of its waste. Pago del Vallo di Lauro manages 44.08%, Moschiano 48.54%. Quindici, six kilometres further on, collapses to 34.63% — a third of what its neighbour achieves. Taurano does better at 80.73%, as does Marzano di Nola at 78.36%. None of them comes close. Nola, the largest town in the area, sits at 73.37%.

So it is not the climate. Not the south, not the north, not the region. All else being equal, inside a single valley, sixty-five percentage points separate the first from the last.

The time series shows when it happened. In 2010 Domicella sorted 58.76% of its waste, an unremarkable figure. By 2013 it had slipped to 55.03% — worse than three years earlier. Then the curve rears up. By 2016 the town stands at 92.61%. In three years it gained thirty-seven percentage points, and it has never fallen back since.

What the ISPRA figures do not say is how. The register measures tonnes, not council minutes: it does not record who signed off on pay-as-you-throw charging, when kerbside collection began, whether anyone weighed the bins. The jump is documented; its cause is not — and that is worth saying out loud rather than filling the gap with a plausible story.

Then there is the bottom of the table, which is a different country again: in Careri, high on the Aspromonte, sorted waste accounts for 0.02%. Effectively nothing. And there is the detail that best explains why Domicella is not an accounting trick: each resident produces 403.15 kg of waste a year, an ordinary amount for an Italian town. It does not recycle nearly everything because it throws away little. It just recycles nearly everything.

In 2013 Domicella sorted 55.03% of its waste — less than Lauro, four kilometres away, manages today. Three years later it had reached 92.61%. Lauro, meanwhile, is still stuck at 53.98%.