Italy's best recycling town isn't in the north — it's near Naples

Below Domicella, the top of the table reads like an upside-down map of Italy. Second comes Ripacandida, in Basilicata, at 98.48%. Third is Spinete, in Molise, at 97.13%. Then Cimitile, Campania again. After them Mordano near Bologna, Sinagra and Castel di Lucio in Sicily, Palena in Abruzzo, Acquafredda near Brescia. Six different regions in the first ten places, and the south is very much there. In Campania the race continues below the peak: behind Domicella come Cimitile, Comiziano, Durazzano and Forchia. Towns no postcard ever mentions.

The picture shifts again when you move from villages to cities. Naples recycles 44.38%: less than half of its waste, barely a third of Domicella's rate a few miles away. But this is no southern failing. Rome sits at 48.03%, only a little better. Milan reaches 63.33%, Venice 63.72%: close to each other, far from the small-town records. The line that divides is not north from south. It is the village from the metropolis. Where a few thousand people live and kerbside collection works, recycling soars everywhere.

Domicella did not always recycle everything. In 2010 it sorted 58.76%, roughly the average of the time. Then the curve climbs: 92.61% in 2016, above 99 from 2020. Today each resident hands over 403 kilos of separated waste a year and almost no residual. A town of eighteen hundred did in ten years what Rome still has not managed.

The full recycling table rewards no single region. It rewards the towns that decided to try: Domicella has reached 99.99%, Naples still sits at 44%.