Strillaie, after the fire stopped machinery, undifferentiated diverted to Pisa and Livorno
GROSSETO. The fire that broke out in the night between Friday and Saturday at the Futura company plant, at Strillaie, near Grosseto, triggers a significant side effect in the management of a large part of the waste in the province of Grosseto.
The machines of the undifferentiated fraction treatment line have suffered extensive damage and are at a standstill. Until they are repaired, all the unsorted waste in the province, destined for this line, be taken elsewhere.
Dove? Just yesterday morning the South Tuscany Ato Waste, in the general assembly, approved the inter-scope Convention, which allows the three Ato of the region to be able to receive waste from each other, in case of need, for a maximum of 15 thousand tons per year in Ato.
According to the law, in fact, the rubbish produced in an ATO must be treated – collected, sent for recycling or sent to landfill – within the borders of the ATO itself. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to rely on external systems.
For Grosseto this is not new. The Cannicci landfill, in Civitella Pagan, closed for some time, has already required the sending of part of the Grosseto waste to Peccioli, Pisano.
And the undifferentiated waste from Grosseto will go to the Peccioli landfill, as well as to that of Scapigliato, which, due to the fire, cannot currently be treated at the Strillaie.
The Strillaie plant, as is well known, is an intermediate stage in the waste cycle. Here the wet and undifferentiated collected by the trucks of Sei Toscana in the 28 municipalities of the province are brought.
The wet is treated in a separate line to make it into compost. And luckily the fire last night spared this line.
The undifferentiated is loaded onto conveyor belts, screened, dried, shredded. It becomes what is called Css, a secondary solid fuel, which, re-compacted in eco-bales, is then sent to incinerators.
As long as the Scarlino incinerator was active, that was the goal. Since the plant is closed due to the well-known legal events, the eco-bales are sent to foreign plants, with not a few logistical and cost problems.
Finally, the waste from this process is sent to landfill. And also in this case the waste cycle proceeds in jolts, given that, as already mentioned, the works on the Cannicci landfill, in the municipality of Civitella Paganico, are not yet finished.
But how long will the CSS line remain stationary? In short, how long will it be necessary to send the waste to Livorno and Pisa, with all the relative costs?
At the moment it is not known. Certainly, the convention sets the waste that one area can accept from another at 15 thousand tons per year.
In the line dedicated to unsorted waste, the Futura plant has a capacity of 295 tons; it is 109,752 tons per year, with variable loads depending on the period: higher in summer, when the population explodes due to tourism, lower in winter. With an average of 8,850 tons per month, the calculation is easy: the buffer solution on Pisa and Livorno will not last even two months.
What is certain, however, is that the province of Grosseto will be forced to produce greater “landfill flows”. In short, even what could be obtained from the undifferentiated as fuel for incinerators will end up being thrown away, helping to increase the volumes of garbage.
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