This is what a member of the Committee for Dignity and Life in Italy’s “Terra dei Fuochi” told us when asked about why she fights waste crime. “Land of Fires” in English, the term describes an area of around 1,100 sq km between Naples and Caserta, covering 90 municipalities and around 3 million inhabitants.
It’s not a reference to the nearby Vesuvius volcano – the “fire” in question is lit by organised criminal groups dumping industrial waste somewhere illegal and setting it on fire.
Illegal trash trails
Criminal networks dump, bury, and burn waste in the open air – not just in Italy: Investigate Europe has identified over 2,000 illegal dumping sites across Europe and suspect there are many more.
Every year, 67 million tonnes of waste move across Europe. In 2021, the European Commission estimated that up to 30% of all waste shipments within the EU might be illegal.
EU law requires every shipment to be registered and tracked. When the waste is toxic or hazardous (like batteries, construction materials, chemical solvents), its producers must classify it, keep a precise record, and dispose of it in specialised facilities to minimise health-related and environmental risks.
That process is expensive. And when businesses want to save money, the black market steps in.
Organised crime often partners with legal or semi-legal firms in the waste disposal sector. Instead of treating and disposing of waste as they should, producers transfer it to areas with weaker law enforcement, where it is simply dumped or burned to cover up the evidence.
“Their goal is to cut costs and maximise profits, and this has nothing to do with sustainability,” Enrico Fontana, Head of Environment and Legality at Italian environmental organisation Legambiente, told TEC.
“We’re talking about people who understand how this waste should be properly managed,” noted Gregor Peklar, a senior criminal inspector at the Slovenian Criminal Police Directorate.
Yet with the line between legitimate and illegitimate companies blurred, it's harder to track who's responsible for polluting. When no culprit is found, the state itself has to bear clean-up costs – with taxpayers’ money.
In the EU, there's a lot of money in green waste management, including through economic incentives for “circular” methods. Yet, Fontana explained, “if there is no adequate monitoring and no adequate sanctions, criminal organisations will set their sights on those incentives.”
Criminals thereby profit off of green EU funds without actually using them to recycle or curb pollution. The illicit waste market in Europe is estimated to generate a profit of €9.5 billion every year.
How to traffic waste
Industries and authorities typically contract a firm to collect, sort, and deliver their waste to a treatment facility.
This is where traffickers come in, undercutting legitimate competitors on price, falsely claiming to have proper facilities, or directly corrupting producers to win the bid.
To make things difficult for law enforcement, firms with ties to criminal groups or entirely managed by them often get legal authorisation to manage waste produced in a certain area, but then do so without respecting any treatment or disposal regulations.
In countries such as Italy, which lack sufficient disposal and treatment facilities, producers are particularly susceptible to cheaper, less scrutinised alternatives.
To transport waste across borders, traffickers falsify documents, lie about the nature and destination of their shipments, and corrupt officials to forge fake licenses and authorisations to operate. They might apply a green-listed waste code to a toxic industrial shipment, for example.
Finally, dumping: traffickers take all of their authorised, non-recycled, or toxic trash and leave it in abandoned and isolated areas, sometimes next to sewers or unfilled landfills, for it to be buried or burned.
Where trash is trafficked
While traffickers in the EU change routes frequently to avoid detection, most run eastbound: waste usually originates from or transits across western European states and ends up in central and eastern ones.
Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria are among the main destinations within the EU. Some countries, such as Slovenia, serve both as traffic corridors and as occasional dumping sites. But large quantities of waste also reach countries outside the EU, such as Türkiye and countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Trafficking is not limited to toxic industrial waste – recyclable materials are also exported and dumped, rather than treated and reused.
Last year, Croatian authorities arrested 13 individuals for arranging the transport of medical waste falsely declared “recyclable plastic” from Italy, Germany, and Slovenia to Croatia. The traffickers were formally contracted by the waste-producing companies and relied on legitimate businesses for their transport.
Catching criminals
In 2025, Europol arrested 337 individuals and seized 127,149 tonnes of waste (that’s the weight of more than 12 Eiffel towers), which could have generated an illicit profit of at least €31 million.
In Albania, in 2024, over 100 shipping containers were loaded in the port of Dürres, allegedly transporting iron oxide, but actually containing toxic waste. A police investigation led to over 30 arrests. The network responsible for it was not an underground group: among those arrested were high-profile figures who served as former directors of the National Environmental Agency.
Illegal waste operations are enabled by weak law enforcement in destination countries. Most states in the Balkans, for example, still lack a specialised environmental police. The difference in regulations explains why German and Italian companies often dispose of their waste in Eastern countries, such as Albania or Bulgaria, where there are fewer checks.
“Sometimes, the waste trafficking operation hides something else. You can have anything: drugs, weapons, whatever you want. Who’s going to look inside that waste?” Sergio Nazzaro, Coordinator of Centro Studi Ecoreati, explained.
Meanwhile in Italy
When trash is dumped, buried, or burned, it releases toxic chemicals into the soil, water, and air. This creates serious problems for human health: exposure to industrial waste disposal, for example, is associated with respiratory problems and liver cancer.
Epidemiological studies of contaminated sites in Italy confirm higher hospitalisation and mortality rates: 1,668 more people die in polluted regions of Italy every year due to waste-related contamination.
There are also long-term economic consequences, including the devaluation of affected areas.
In 2013, when the situation in Italy‘s Terra dei Fuochi gained a spike of media attention, consumers were quick to react: the region‘s agricultural sector saw sales drop by 40% within a month – regardless of whether products came from a contaminated area or not. By 2015, sustained loss of consumer confidence was costing the sector €500 million annually. More than a decade later, around 500 hectares of agricultural land are considered too dangerous to cultivate.
Last year, the European Court of Human Rights declared the Italian state guilty of failing to protect residents’ right to life, giving the government two years to clean up contaminated areas and curb illegal dumping. The Committee for Dignity and Life was formed to ensure it happens.
Slowly, things have started moving: stricter sanctions for polluters and a €15 million fund to support these operations. But the Commissioner responsible says the job will take ten years and cost €2 billion.
The fact that this crime has been going on for so long, with permanent consequences, has left communities feeling abandoned and wounded: “For us, it’s a question of dignity,” said the Committee for Dignity and Life member. “We have been wronged by a criminal system which has polluted our land for decades, and public institutions are now legally guilty for that. And we are not the only ones: our case, our fight, needs to set an example not only for Italy, not only for Europe, but for the whole world.”