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15 September 2025 - 16:12
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9 September 2025 - 16:40
A complete failure for the Campania cities that are provincial capitals on the environmental front. Cities that are immobile, not very green, without a vision for the future.
It is the judgment of Legambiente in Ecosistema Urbano 2022, the report produced in collaboration with Ambiente Italia and Il Sole 24 ORE, on the environmental performance of 105 provincial capitals which takes into account 18 indicators, distributed in six thematic areas: air, water, waste, mobility, urban environment and energy.
The final ranking that comes out of it, with data relating to 2021, represents the synthesis. In Campania, compared to last year, almost all of them worsen their performances and only Avellino records a slight jump, positioning itself in 69th place, climbing 5 positions. Caserta loses only one position, settling in 67th place.
Benevento collapses, losing 19 positions and settling at 76th position. Napoli confirms itself in the safety zone at number 92 (it was 91st last year). Salerno is doing badly, among the last in the rankings with its 99th position (it was 94th last year).
"A disappointment," comments Francesca Ferro, director of Legambiente Campania, "for the Campanian capitals reading this edition of Ecosistema Urbano. Those who hoped for a change of direction after the pandemic were disappointed, as is clearly visible in the cities, where immobility has returned to the streets clogged with cars, the presence of mini-landfills around the dumpsters, the gray blanket of smog obscuring the view of the blue sky, inefficient public transportation, and the discoloration of some rivers polluted by untreated civil and industrial waste. The ecological transition does not pass through the Campanian capitals."
Salerno, with 210 litres per day per capita of domestic drinking water consumption, far exceeds the national average of 155 litres per day, while Benevento, with 150 litres per day, comes very close.
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To estimate the likely losses, we calculate the share of drinking water released into the network and not consumed: the average data on water losses in the main cities confirms a critical situation and the absence of strong signs of discontinuity with the past.
The worst situation is recorded in Salerno with 61% of losses, followed by Caserta with 60,6%, Benevento with 54,9% and Naples with 27%. The latest Istat data relating to the percentage of the population served by the urban wastewater sewerage network for 2018 presents a very critical situation in Benevento where only 17% of inhabitants are connected to the network; while the other provincial capitals have good percentages with excellent ones for Salerno and Avellino which reach 100% of the population.
Only Benevento exceeded the legal target of 65% separate waste collection set for 2012 with a percentage of 66,4%. Avellino came close with 62,1%. Salerno followed with 58,9%. Caserta closed with 52,6% and Naples with a paltry 37,5%.
Waste production represents one of the greatest environmental pressures in our cities, and not only where collection and disposal emergencies have occurred. For this reason, reducing waste production is an important objective identified by European and national policies. In 2022, Naples, with 549,8 kg per capita per year, exceeds the national average of 525,5 kg.
All the cities of Campania have an endowment lower than the national average of 43 m22,2/inhabitant of usable urban greenery. It ranges from 13 m19 in Benevento to almost XNUMX mXNUMX in Naples and Avellino. Salerno settles around XNUMX mXNUMX.
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