Insights
What is the real impact of over 139 million tourists on Italy's waste? The answer is less obvious than it seems.
Every year, tens of millions of visitors travel across Italy. Accordingto ISTAT, 2024 set a new record with 139.6 million arrivals. Tourists crowd squares, hike trails, fill restaurants and hotels, and thenleave. They take home memories of their holidays and, in return, make a major contribution to the country’s wealth, accounting, according to ENIT, for 10.8%of national GDP. Obviously, millions of people also consume resources andgenerate waste. Civiqa has used data to address an apparently simple question with a far from obvious answer: is there a correlation between the intensity of tourist flows and municipal waste generation in Italy? And how does a separate collection perform in this context?
A first way to measure this impact is to look at how much tourism“weighs” on municipal waste. According to ISPRA’s environmental indicators,in 2023 waste attributable to tourist flows averaged 15.7 kg per equivalent inhabitant, up on the previous year. The equivalent in habitant indicator adds tourist overnight stays to residents, converting them into “additional inhabitants” on an annual basis: a tourist spending ten days in a municipality counts as 10/365 of a resident. To calculate this, ISPRA looks not only at overnight stays in official accommodation, but also at secondhomes, stays with friends and relatives, and day trips. This reveals the“invisible” contribution of people who are not recorded as residents but stilluse public spaces, services and local infrastructure, and generate waste as if they were, in all respects, one more inhabitant.
The next question is how this impact is distributed across different municipal contexts. Territories do not all start from the same baseline: a coastal municipality with 10,000 residents and 100,000 annual tourist stays faces very different pressure from an inland village that only attracts a few thousand visitors. Service capacity also varies according to the latest data on municipal waste; some municipalities exceed 600 kg of waste per inhabitant per year, while others remain below 400 kg. To capture these differences, Civiqa compared tourist stays and residual (non,separated) waste by type of municipality, distinguishing between urban centres, inter,municipal hubs, peripheral municipalities and ultra,peripheral areas located in inland, coastal and mountain contexts.
As often happens with territorial data, the picture is more complex than it seems. ISTAT and ISPRA figures for the most recent two, year period show that tourist flows reshape pressure on local waste management systems, but in different ways depending on the area.
The first finding is counterintuitive. The relationship between tourist stays and residual waste is not linear and is not limited to large cities. The most critical issues cluster at two extremes of Italy’s geography: major urban hubs and ultra-peripheral areas, both in inland, coastal and mountain settings.
In large centres, the combination of residents, daily users of the city and tourists generate high volumes of residual waste: in some seaside resorts, such as Rimini, peak, season waste exceeds 77 kg per tourist. Cities like Rome, Venice and Naples manage peak, season visitor flows that put significant strain on collection services.
At the other extreme, many small ultra-peripheral villages, often facing population decline and served by minimal infrastructure, have to cope with tourism concentrated in just a few weeks. In these places, annual tourist stays only need to be 2–3 times the resident population to push the collection system to the limit. In 2026, more than 21.3 million arrivals are expected in municipalities with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, a figure that makes it clear that organisational capacity matters at least as much as the number of tourists.
The bivariate map that combines tourism intensity and separate collection rates shows that the North–South divide is not clear,cut, even though it remains evident. In 2024, separate collection reached 67.7% on average at national level, with the North at 74.2%, the Centre at 63.2% and the South at 60.2%. The most virtuous quadrant, high tourism intensity and high separate collection, is largely occupied by North,Eastern Italy (Veneto, Trentino,Alto Adige, Friuli,Venezia Giulia), where some regions consistently exceed 75–78%. At the opposite end, many coastal and island areas in the Mezzogiorno fall into the critical quadrant, with high tourist pressure but separate collection rates that rarely exceed 55–60%, suggesting that the issue is not tourism as such, but the weakness of the infrastructure that is supposed to support it.
A particularly critical group are the High Tourism, Low Recycling municipalities, characterised by high tourist pressure and low separate collection rates. On the map they cluster mainly along the southern coasts and on the islands, with the partial exception of Sardinia, but the same pattern also appears in some Alpine areas in the North. The key factor is not only latitude, but also the seasonal structure of tourist flows: municipalities that concentrate most of their visitors in a few weeks have to manage waste peaks in a very short time. In this sense, a ski resort in the Alpine arc and a seaside town in Calabria share the same problem: a collection system designed around residents that must suddenly expand to cope with a seasonal demand that is hard to plan for.
The data point towards a clear conclusion: tackling waste in tourist municipalities means tackling, first and foremost, territorial governance. Separate collection reached 67.7% on average in 2024, with the North at 74.2%, the Centre at 63.2% and the South at 60.2%. But these averages mask huge territorial gaps and do not factor in tourism: a municipality that performs well in January can easily struggle in August. For local authorities, the challenge is not just to increase percentages, but to build collection systems that are flexible, resilient, and proportionate to the actual pressure generated by the combination of residents and tourists.
For mayors, environmental councilors and managers of local public services, these data provide a starting point for action. Municipalities with high tourism intensity should have access to dedicated financing tools for seasonal waste management. Small inland municipalities, which often lack economies of scale, should be supported through shared management models. And coastal areas in the Mezzogiorno, which display the most critical combination, need more than just awareness campaigns: they require structural investments that make separate collection feasible even when visitors arrive.
Tourism is a resource. But every resource has a cost. Making that cost visible, in data, policies and municipal budgets, is the first step towards governing it effectively.
How much autonomy do Italian municipalities really have over their own revenue? To answer this, two distinct levels must be separated: financial autonomy - the weight of own resources within total revenue - and fiscal autonomy - the actual room for manoeuvre over local taxes, within the limits set by law. Having own resources and being able to decide on taxation are not the same thing. Understanding this distinction is the first step towards correctly reading Italian local public finance.
Take the example of Alpette, a very small municipality of 248 inhabitants belonging to the Metropolitan City of Turin. According to the analysis of SIOPE 2025 data - the Ministry of Economy's information system on the financial operations of public entities, conducted across approximately 8,000 Italian municipalities - Alpette has near-total financial autonomy (own revenue accounting for 97.9%) and fiscal autonomy equal to zero. This may seem a paradox, but it is not. Financial autonomy and fiscal autonomy are two indicators that measure different things: the former means that Alpette barely depends on external transfers, because it generates almost all of its revenue itself; the latter tells us that none of that revenue derives from locally determined tax levers such as the IMU (local property tax), TARI (waste tax), or IRPEF surcharges. The two figures coexist because non-tax revenue (service charges, fees, asset income) contributes to financial autonomy but not to fiscal autonomy. In other words, a municipality can finance itself without holding any real margin of manoeuvre over its own taxation.
From the SIOPE 2025 data, the firstfinding that emerges strongly is the difference between municipalitiesbelonging to ordinary statute regions (RSO) and those belonging to specialstatute regions (RSS): Valle d'Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-VeneziaGiulia, Sardinia, and Sicily. The financial autonomy of RSO municipalitiesstands at 82.8%. That of RSS municipalities falls to 48.4%. This gap of overthirty percentage points might appear to be an anomaly: are municipalities inspecial statute regions less autonomous? The answer is no - or more precisely,not in the sense one might intuitively assume.
This difference is not a failure of the system, but an indicator of how it works. In special statute regions, resources reach municipalities mainly through the region (or autonomous province) - which retains shares of IRPEF and VAT and redistributes them locally - rather than directly from the State. What appears as "lower autonomy" is in reality a different institutional architecture: the resources are there, often in greater measure, but they reach municipalities along a different path.
This reading is confirmed by data on per capita current revenue. RSS municipalities receive significantly higher resources per inhabitant than ordinary statute municipalities: Valle d'Aosta reaches approximately €2,817 per inhabitant and Trentino €1,711, against an ordinary-region average ranging between €610 and €1,080. This mechanism has a direct consequence for the reading of indicators.
If financial autonomy is measured as the share of own revenue in total current revenue, RSS municipalities will always appear structurally "less autonomous" - not because they collect less, but because of a different accounting treatment of the regional transfer. It is essential to read the origin of resources alongside the overall size of the budget.
Back to Alpette: 97.9% financial autonomy, fiscal autonomy close to zero, no adjustable tax rate, no local tax lever. This is not an isolated case, but the norm. The reason is simple. Most of the "own" revenue of Italian municipalities does not derive from taxes that the municipality can genuinely adjust - such as the IMU, TARI, or IRPEF surcharges - but from service charges, fees, and asset income, over which discretion is limited or non-existent. Fiscal autonomy measures precisely this share: how much of its tax yield a municipality can actually govern. And the figures are low everywhere. Even in the largest cities, the urban poles, it barely reaches 6.1%. In practice, a mayor may have 85% of revenue classified as "own" while being unable to touch almost any of their local taxation. This is a critical point in the debate on differentiated autonomy and fiscal equalisation.
The third element of complexity concerns small municipalities, and in particular those in ultra-peripheral areas - low-density zones, far from urban poles, often in demographic decline. SIOPE shows that municipalities with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants record some of the highest per capita current revenue, at around €1,050 per inhabitant, above that of urban belts (€616 per inhabitant). At first glance they appear better resourced, but this is not the case: with very small populations, even a modest absolute revenue figure produces high per capita values. Ala di Stura, a Piedmontese municipality of 463 inhabitants, shows per capita own revenue of €1,166, well above the national average, yet total current revenue amounts to just €730,000. This is not a signal of real fiscal capacity: with few inhabitants, even modest revenue produces high per capita values. This is why the per capita figure must always be read alongside the absolute total of revenue.
The final interpretive lens concerns the relationship between demographic size and financial autonomy. Here one of the sharpest differences between the two institutional frameworks emerges. In ordinary statute municipalities, financial autonomy is remarkably stable as demographic size varies. Belt areas range between 84.9% for micro-municipalities and 89.6% for municipalities with between 5,000 and 15,000 inhabitants. Intermediate areas move between 81.7% and 86.2%. The ordinary equalisation system - whose principal redistributive instrument is the Municipal Solidarity Fund (Fondo di solidarietà comunale) - appears to guarantee relative structural uniformity, regardless of scale.
In RSS municipalities the picture is very different. Financial autonomy ranges from 48.6% in micro-municipalities (below 2,000 inhabitants) to 67.8% in cities above 50,000 inhabitants - a variation of nearly twenty percentage points. The reason is structural: the regional revenue-sharing system weighs proportionally more heavily on smaller municipalities, where own-source revenue is structurally low relative to the volume of resources transferred by the region. The smaller the municipality, the greater its dependence on the regional transfer.
Bringing these elements together produces a precise picture, far less simplistic than what is often read in the debate on Italian local public finance. The SIOPE data allow us to formulate at least four methodological cautions that should underpin any comparative analysis of local authorities:
• High financial autonomy does not mean decision-making autonomy: a municipality can have almost all own revenue and zero real tax levers;
• Depending on transfers does not mean having few resources: in special statute regions, municipalities often receive more resources, but through a different channel;
• High per capita values do not indicate real fiscal capacity: in small municipalities, the effect of a tiny population inflates the indicators;
• Comparing RSO and RSS with the same yardstick leads to wrong conclusions: they are institutional architectures with different logics.
Too often the same yardstick is used to measure systems that work in radically different ways. The result is a distorted map: "autonomous" municipalities that cannot move a single tax rate, "dependent" municipalities with some of the highest resources in Italy. Distinguishing is not a technical detail: it is the condition for understanding where the room for manoeuvre of those who govern a territory really ends.
A municipality needs to rebuild a school. It has three options: routine maintenance, deep refurbishment, or new construction. The first costs less today, but in ten years the building will need redoing again. The third costsmore, but lasts fifty years and also improves air quality in the neighbourhood. Which one do you choose? The answer is not obvious. And often, without adequate tools, the choice simply falls on the least expensive option in the short term -regardless of how much value it holds over the long run. This is precisely the problem that the ENPV, the Economic Net Present Value, helps to solve.
The ENPV is a number. It indicates whether a public investment projectis worthwhile: if it is positive, the project creates morevalue than its costs; if it is negative, it costs more than it returns. The under lying logic is simple: a public project does not only generate direct costs and revenues, it also generates welfare. A well-built school improves educational outcomes, reduces energy costs, raises property values in the neighbourhood, and lowers emissions. The ENPV takes allthese effects, lines them up, and turns them into a single comparable figure. There is then an essential technical element: discounting. One euro spent today is worth more than one saved twenty years from now, and the ENPV accounts forth is asymmetry in order to make projects of different durations and .
Those familiar with the business world know that the NPV (financial NetPresent Value) is something different, a broader concept. A financial analysislooks only at cash flows: revenues, expenditures, interest. That works for aprivate company, which is accountable to its shareholders. But a municipalityis accountable to its community; indeed, the value created for the territoryand for citizens cannot be measured in euros alone. The ENPV alsoincludes:
· Social benefits: access to services, quality of life, inclusion;
· Environmental benefits: emissions reduction, energy efficiency, urbangreen space;
· Employment effects: jobs created, local supply chains activated;
· Indirect economic impacts: territorial productivity, attractiveness forbusinesses and residents.
The ENPV does not decide on behalf of administrators. Determining how much weight to give the environment relative to employment, or which time horizon to consider, are political choices and they must remain so.
Until a few years ago, the ENPV was used mainly in the assessments required by the European Union for large infrastructure projects. Today the situation has changed. With the new Public Procurement Code (Legislative Decree 36/2023), the DOCFAP - the Document on the Feasibility of Project Alternatives — was introduced. This is a mandatory document that every contracting authority must produce before starting the design phase: it serves to compare the different possible solutions and to choose the most advantageous one, including the option of doing nothing. The ENPV is the analytical tool at the heart of the DOCFAP for the assessment of public investments. Specifically, it is the indicator of the Economic Cost-Benefit Analysis (ECBA) used to compare project alternatives, so that every choice becomes documented, measurable, and defensible.
In recent years, three factors have made the ENPV no longer an advanced methodological option, but a practical necessity for municipalities.
The NRRP and EU funds require sound economic assessments. Authorities that cannot demonstrate the value generated by their investments risk difficulties in financial reporting and, in the worst cases, the withdrawal of funding.
Pressure on accountability has grown. Citizens and the media increasingly ask to understand why one project was chosen over another. Having a positive and documented ENPV is the most solid answer an administrator can give.
Budget constraints are not easing. With fewer resources available, every wrong choice weighs more heavily. The ENPV helps identify where each euro of public money produces the greatest impact.
The ENPV forces one to line up all the consequences of a choice, compare alternatives on a homogeneous basis, and document the assumptions on which the decision rests. It does not eliminate uncertainty, but it makes it visible and manageable.
The fiscal sustainability of Italian municipalities has a dimension that goes beyond the deadlines set by the Consolidated Act on Local Authorities (TUEL) for budget submission. What matters is understanding what will happen when the demographic transformations already under way present the bill. To answer this question, Civiqa analysed approximately 7,900 Italian municipalities, cross-referencing two structural dimensions that are often assessed separately: the demographic pressure associated with population ageing and the degree of rigidity of municipal budgets.
The map of fiscal vulnerability across municipalities shows a geographic distribution that does not follow a simple North–South divide. While inland areas and many southern municipalities concentrate the most critical combination — high demographic pressure coupled with historically rigid budgets - structural vulnerability is present in every region. North-Eastern Italy, for example, features municipalities with more flexible budgets but already advanced population ageing; Liguria and Sardinia record the highest old-age dependency ratios in the country. The chromatic variation of the map reflects exactly this: structural vulnerability is a heterogeneously distributed phenomenon that cannot be read in regional averages but only becomes visible at the level of the individual municipality.
Population ageing is hardly new. Yet its implications for local public expenditure remain underestimated in the financial planning of many local authorities. The figures speak clearly: today, people aged 65 and over account for 24.7% of Italy's population, and the old-age index — measuring the number of elderly persons per 100 young people under 14 — reached 208% in 2024, up from 149% in 2011. ISTAT projections (Previsioni della popolazione residente e delle famiglie — Base 1/1/2024, July 2025) indicate that by 2050 the share of over-65s will rise to 34.6%, with more than 6.5 million elderly people living alone.
More elderly people means growing demand for personal care services — home assistance, transport, local welfare — services that fall largely on municipalities. This is a demand that grows silently and gradually, difficult to "feel" in a single year's budget, but which over the medium-to-long term completely reshapes the profile of required expenditure. Against this growing pressure, the average municipal expenditure per elderly person has moved in the opposite direction, declining from €107 to €93 per year between 2012 and 2022, with a territorial gap ranging from €174 per capita in North-Eastern Italy to just €40 in the South.
Assessing budget "rigidity" is a way to understand how much real fiscal space a municipality currently has. A rigid budget is one in which the share of committed current expenditure — personnel, debt service, non-compressible essential services — is already so high as to leave little room to reallocate resources, invest, or respond to new needs. The standard spending review introduced by the 2024 Budget Law made this problem even more tangible: cuts to the municipal solidarity fund were distributed in proportion to committed current expenditure, penalising authorities with the least fiscal room. Under normal conditions, this rigidity is a structural weakness. In the presence of growing demographic pressures, it becomes a vulnerability multiplier.
Cross-referencing these two dimensions yields very different structural vulnerability profiles. Simplifying, four scenarios can be identified:
• High demographic pressure + rigid budget: this is the most critical combination. These municipalities will face growing demand for services with increasingly inflexible resources. The room for adaptation is minimal;
• High demographic pressure + flexible budget: the demographic condition is challenging, but the authority still has room to redirect resources. The risk exists, but is manageable with careful planning;
• Low demographic pressure + rigid budget: fiscal rigidity remains a structural problem, but within a more stable demographic context. A risk to monitor, though not yet urgent;
• Low demographic pressure + flexible budget: this is the most resilient profile. These municipalities start from a position of relative advantage in facing the future.
This analysis does not claim that these municipalities are in crisis today. It says something more subtle and more important: that some local administrations are accumulating structural fragilities without necessarily seeing them in their annual balance indicators. A budget can be formally in balance while the future capacity to meet citizens' needs erodes slowly.
This is a matter of time horizon. Local public finance tends to be assessed over the short term, while demographic transformations unfold over decades. Aligning these time horizons - bringing the structural dimension into today's decisions - is one of the most significant challenges facing those who govern local territories.
Analyses such as this do not aim to identify "who is struggling", but to equip administrators and public decision-makers with a richer understanding of their authority's situation. Understanding which quadrant of the positioning map a municipality falls into and understanding why - is the first step towards building informed adaptation strategies. This means planning expenditure allocation, setting investment priorities, and accessing available funds to strengthen services for the most vulnerable citizens.
The efficiency and sustainability of public decisions are not built by looking only at the present. They are built by learning to read the future in today's data - and by equipping oneself with the tools to turn that reading into concrete choices.
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