The number of people cremated instead of buried in our country has been increasing for decades, but the trend has been accelerated by the pandemic. In Italy in 1995 there were only 15 thousand cremations (3 per cent of the total deaths), which then rose to 48 thousand in 2005 and 183 thousand in 2018 (29 per cent). But with the covid emergency there was an even more evident leap: in 2020 there were 248 thousand cremations (Sefit Utilitalia data), that is 33 percent of the total deaths. On the national territory today there are 87 crematoria, especially in Piedmont (15), Lombardy (12), Emilia-Romagna (12) and Tuscany (11), while the phenomenon is less widespread in the south.
The reasons for this increase are different: the niches are always more expensive and difficult to find than the spaces for the urns. And then there is the lower environmental impact and the possibility to keep the ashes at home or disperse them, which favors a cultural change: the dead are no longer found. With the pandemic, Bologna has become the third Italian crematorium after Rome and Milan, going from 6,800 cremations in 2019 to 12,000 this year. And while in 2019 95 percent of the demand came from the metropolitan area, in 2021 only 53 percent of the requests came from Bologna and its province, while the rest was “imported” from other regions: especially Trentino, Veneto, Lombardy, Tuscany and Marche. Bologna Servizi Cimiteriali has inaugurated the third line of the Borgo Panigale crematorium, which will enter full capacity at the end of the year, with an investment of 650 thousand euros.
But if on the one hand there is an “aesthetic” care for cremation plants, which look less and less like factories and try to take on the ritual functions of funerals, at the same time the protests of those who live near the crematorium ovens increase, for fear of fumes and the decline in the value of adjacent properties. Furthermore, there is a lack of tools to plan the construction of crematoria at the regional level, and many municipalities are authorizing them autonomously.
It’s a big business that also attracts organized crime
In Staglieno, the district of Genoa known for its vast monumental cemetery where four crematory ovens already operate, citizens are fighting against the construction of a new building with three other ovens: the plant would be located in the midst of characteristic villages, where vegetable gardens, olive groves and fruit trees are cultivated, and where beekeeping and breeding are practiced. The work, which has a cost of about four million euros, would make it possible to cremate up to 4,500 corpses a year, which would be added to the more than 7,000 today.
Almost two thousand signatures were collected in Cologno Monzese against the new furnace that was supposed to carry out about 5 thousand cremations a year, reducing the waiting lists due to the covid emergency also in other Lombard municipalities and in the north of Milan. But in February the region rejected the project. A similar scenario was also repeated in Gaeta, where in November the Latina Tar canceled the construction of the new “Cremation Garden”, after citizens had launched a petition and after the province of Latina had expressed a negative opinion on emissions. in the atmosphere and on the discharge of waste water.
As often happens for other cemetery services, the turnover of the crematorium ovens also attracts the interest of organized crime. In 2019 in Foggia the company that managed the cemetery and the crematorium of the city, the Finance Project of Capitanata srl, was commissioned for “hypothesis of Mafia conditioning”. Meanwhile, in Palermo, at the Rotoli cemetery, the construction of the new crematorium oven has been expected for years, included in the three-year program of public works in 2015 and already financed with 2.7 million euros: this is an extension of the existing oven, subject to continuous failures.
After years of paralysis, in 2019 the project was entrusted to a new manager and the design phase has just started: if the deadlines are respected, the oven will be ready in 2024. In the meantime, the emergency linked to the burials has reached points critical, with hundreds of coffins piled up under tents, warehouses and administrative offices. Thus began the transfer of part of the bodies to the Sant’Orsola cemetery in Palermo, while at the end of the summer even a company in Caltanissetta offered free transport and cremation for 60 deceased.