Semia Gharbi

Semia Gharbi helped spearhead a campaign that challenged a corrupt waste trafficking scheme between Italy and Tunisia, resulting in the return of 6,000 tons of illegally exported household waste back to Italy, its country of origin, in February 2022. More than 40 corrupt government officials and others involved in waste trafficking in both countries were arrested in the scandal. Her efforts spurred policy shifts within the EU, which has now tightened its procedures and regulations for waste shipments abroad.

A Global Scandal

In 2020, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated that wealthy nations illegally exported 1.7 billion tons of waste to developing countries in the act of “waste trafficking.” The shipment of waste across borders is regulated by legally binding treaties in order to protect human health and the environment, but waste traffickers routinely take advantage of vague sanitization codes, regulatory loopholes, and lower environmental standards and fees in developing countries.  

For Tunisia, waste export is regulated by the Bamako Convention, Basel Convention, Tunisian regulations, and EU policy, the latter of which prohibits sending waste to a non-EU country to be landfilled, and only authorizes exporting waste if the receiving country has the capacity and facilities for recycling. Tunisia provides firm guidelines and penalties on the import of non-hazardous waste and strictly prohibits the import of hazardous waste.  

However, the Tunisian government struggles with effective enforcement and waste management. The country has at least 10 monitored landfills, established in 2008, that are at capacity or over capacity, posing sanitary health risks to nearby communities. Two civilian-led campaigns—in 2018 and 2019, respectively—protested the state of the country’s overflowing landfills.

In November 2019, the Tunisian company SOREPLAST Suarl and Italian company Sviluppo Risorse Ambientali (SRA)—both waste recovery and disposal businesses—signed a contract to recycle Italian materials in Tunisia, a plan that was authorized by Tunisia’s National Waste Management Agency in February 2020. Between May and July 2020, SRA shipped 282 containers—carrying 7,900 tons of supposedly recyclable waste—from Italy to Sousse Port, Tunisia, to be processed by SOREPLAST. SOREPLAST agreed to sort and recycle the materials before exporting them back to Italy. 

Upon inspection by authorities, the shipping containers were discovered to hold common household garbage destined for Tunisian landfills, and not the 93% recyclable plastic as declared. The system had broken down. 

A Renaissance Woman

Semia Gharbi, 57, is a scientist and environmental educator who has devoted her life to the intersection of science and healthy environments free of toxic chemicals. Once focused on pesticides research in particular, she followed the natural progression to real life applications, leading her to a 20+ year career as a teacher and advocate.   

In 2011, she founded—and currently chairs—the Association of Environmental Education for Future Generations, an NGO that partners closely with Tunisia’s Ministry of Education to spread awareness of hazardous chemicals. Semia is the Middle East and North Africa coordinator for the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) and the co-founder of Réseau Tunisie Verte (RTV; Green Tunisia Network), a network of more than 100 environmental organizations.

Righting a Wrong

In September 2020, the Tunisian government began quietly investigating rumors of illegal waste in the containers that arrived from Italy—and the specter of corruption on both sides of the Mediterranean. When news of the “Italian waste scandal” broke publicly in November 2020, Semia and her colleagues at RTV mobilized to support the government’s response and persuade officials to return the 282 containers of illegal, non-recyclable waste to Italy.  

Beginning in late 2020, Semia and RTV mounted a robust national campaign urging action and accountability from both the Tunisian and Italian governments. Together with the core members of RTV, she did media interviews and drafted press releases, wrote letters to relevant ministries and commissions, and met with the ministries of environment and foreign affairs to make the case. 

In November 2020, due in large part to public demand stoked by RTV’s campaign, a Tunisian parliamentary commission overseeing corruption launched an investigation into both SOREPLAST and the government officials involved in the contract. Just one month later, as a result of the investigation, several government officials were fired, and the Minister of Environment, together with 25 other ministry officials, were arrested and investigated. The Minister of Environment and three others were found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. The owner of SOREPLAST disappeared before he could be arrested but was sentenced in absentia to 15 years.

Concurrent with the national campaign, Semia engaged her global network through her role at IPEN, mobilizing support and focusing international media attention on the issue. In March 2021, she jointly published a report with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Basel Action Network, and Zero Waste Europe calling on Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and European Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius to order the immediate repatriation of the Italian household waste. Semia also provided dossiers to the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Special Rapporteur. In response, the UN Special Rapporteur visited Italy in December 2021 to investigate, issuing a formal report recommending that the Italian government “formulate and effectively implement a plan to ensure the environmentally sound management and disposal of the waste returned to Italy from Tunisia, as well as a plan for the return of the containers that remain in Tunisia.” 

On December 29, 2021, a suspicious fire burned 70 of the 282 containers as they were being stored at a SOREPLAST warehouse.  

Following months of investigation and talks, the governments of Tunisia and Italy signed an agreement in February 2022 to return the remaining 212 containers—carrying approximately 6,000 tons of household waste—back to Italy. This outcome was the result of months of advocacy by Semia and her colleagues as a civil society effort to support their government.  

In November 2023, the European Parliament and the European Council agreed to strengthen the rules and regulations governing waste export, with the goal of ensuring that international shipments of waste do not harm human health or the environment, and to promote the use of waste as a resource in the EU’s circular economy. The new rules state that non-OECD countries, such as Tunisia, must prove that they can treat waste effectively in order to receive it; ban the export of plastic waste from the EU; and provide the EU with new tools to combat eco-mafias, including a new enforcement group to improve cooperation among EU countries to prevent illegal waste shipments. 

All told, more than 40 people involved in waste trafficking scheme in both Italy and Tunisia were arrested, including 26 Tunisian officials and 16 Italians with ties to organized waste trafficking.