In Parma, garbage is a serious business. The red street garbage cans in the northern Italian city of Emilia-Romagna set the tone: "E vietato abbandonare rifiuti domestici dentro e intorno ai cestini." Translation: "It is forbidden to abandon household waste in and around garbage cans." The call to order is accompanied by a warning: "This inappropriate behavior will be punished." And the penalties can be steep: up to a €10,000 fine and criminal prosecution for hazardous waste.

Ten CCTV cameras installed throughout the city track down citizens with "inappropriate behavior." Seven are in plain sight, hanging from lampposts like speed cameras to raise awareness among the city's 200,000 inhabitants; three are hidden in cabinets resembling electrical cabinets to escape the vigilance of the most crooked spirits. The images are screened by a specialized company. In the event of a suspected offense, they are passed on to the "investigating agents" of IREN, the public company charged by the Parma municipality with its waste management.

The seven-strong team was tracking down a "serial polluter." In the space of a month, a retired doctor had abandoned his household waste 27 times using his car. His license plate was identified on the videos. Caught red-handed, his case is now in the hands of the police.

Around 4,000 inspections a year

The cases are not always so easy to solve for the "garbage detectives," as they like to call themselves. Sara Mazzola and Nicola Nuzzi, both in their thirties, patrolled the cobbled streets of the old town. A bag of garbage had been left on the sidewalk below a building, a few meters from a CCTV camera. Nuzzi first slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then a second, thicker pair, sliced the bag open with a cutter, then removed the garbage contents one by one: cigarette butts and packaging from a fast-food giant and leading online retailer.

Mazzola, a pineapple and watermelon tattooed on her biceps, photographed with her fuchsia smartphone anything that might serve as "clues" leading back to the offender. To avoid identification, the latter had taken care to remove the name tag from the Amazon box and used a lighter to render the barcode illegible. "Very smart," commented Nuzzi.

Leaning out of her apartment window, an elderly lady called out to her:

– "Are you going to fine the whole building?"

– "No, only the owner of the bag risks a penalty."

The "garbage detectives" carry out around 4,000 checks a year. Between 10% and 15% result in fines. These are mostly for waste left unattended in the street by people who (deliberately or through ignorance) evade the constraints of separate door-to-door collection and incentive-based pricing (each household pays a fee proportional to the waste it generates), the two pillars of Parma's waste management system. A "zero waste" strategy, gradually implemented from 2013 onward, has proved its worth and has been emulated by New York, Barcelona, Brussels Bordeaux. Delegations from all over the world (elected representatives, non-profit organizations, researchers) come not just to taste Parma's ham and cheese but be inspired by its model.

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