The management of agricultural plastic packaging waste: a pilot experimentation in Southern Italy.

In the early sixties started the "green revolution", a phenomenal increase in agricultural productivity worldwide; with it a wide and extensive diffusion of plastic material and a massive use of agrochemicals made their entrance in agriculture. The plastics used at farm level are many and different: film, hard sheet, net, string, tube and agrochemical container. All these plastics become waste and the problem of their disposal cannot be ignored since several studies indicate that most of them are disposed in an illegally way (by burning, burying, dispersion). When the waste are agrochemical containers the problem is more acute because they aren’t often rinsed, resulting contaminated with chemical residues. In order to analyze the Italian current situation on this matter the Authors, in the framework of the “Agrochepack” Project, produced a mapping of Agricultural Plastic Packaging Waste (APPW) situation in an area of Southern Italy. This information was took as a basis for the design of a pilot plant that was realized in order to enable pilot tests of APPW disposal. The first indications, as a result of meetings with farmers, showed an increased attention towards the "environmental protection", as shown by the good results that were obtained within the Project.