Tunisians demonstrate to ask Italy to recover waste

Several dozen Tunisians demonstrated outside the Italian embassy in Tunis on Thursday to demand the return of nearly 300 containers of household waste illegally imported from Italy last summer.

The demonstrators wrote “take back your shit” in Italian on a large banner and put garbage bags lined with flowers in front of the embassy.

“We want you (the Italian authorities) to recover your waste,” Hamdi Chebaane, waste recovery expert and member of a coalition of environmental associations, told AFP.

“We welcome you with flowers and you welcome us with garbage,” he said, also calling on the Tunisian authorities to take “the right decisions” to return the garbage.

The 282 containers from Campania in southern Italy are still in the port city of Sousse, where dozens of protesters demonstrated last week.

Tunisian customs officials seized containers last year that had been imported by a Tunisian company under cover of plastic waste intended for industrial recycling.

But the containers contained household waste, banned from import under Tunisian law.

The scandal resulted in the sacking and arrest of Tunisian environment minister Mustapha Aroui, who, along with 25 other people, including eight in detention, face prosecution.

The director of the Tunisian import company is still at large. The company had signed a contract with an Italian company for the disposal of up to 120,000 tonnes of waste at a price of 48 euros ($ 57) per tonne for a total of more than five million euros.

The case sheds light on the global trade in waste as richer countries dump their trash on the poorest who, like Tunisia, are often ill-equipped to deal with it.