Waste management: preventing corruption and environmental crimes

February 25, the new Guidelines for the application of Legislative Decree 231/2001 in the field of waste management were presented. The document, drawn up by FISE Assoambiente, has been verified and approved by the Italian Ministry of Justice.

To achieve a means of prevention and protection against corruption and environmental crimes, capable of supporting waste management enterprises in establishing an organizational, management and control model. With these objectives FISE Assoambiente (Building Environmental Services Association of Confindustria) in collaboration with Certiquality has developed the “Organizational Models and environmental management systems” Guidelines, presented in Rome at the Confindustria HQ during an event attended by, among others, Giuseppe Berretta (Italian Parliamentary Judiciary Committee), Miriam Cominelli (Parliamentary Commission of inquiry on illegal activities related to the waste cycle) and Bruno Giordano (Magistrate of the Italian Supreme Court).
The FISE Assoambiente Guidelines, which constitute a furthering of urban sanitation and waste management activities with respect to the Guidelines drawn up by Confindustria, have been approved by the Italian Ministry of Justice and constitutes an operational tool for defining an adequate system of crime prevention and control for companies operating in the sector.

Promote the rule of law
At almost 15 years on from the Legislative Decree n. 231 of 2001 regarding corporate offences and offences against the public administration, its extension to the subjects of safety in the workplace and to crimes against the environment (the illicit collection, transport, recovery or disposal of waste and monitoring of disposal sites, etc...) has further expanded the number of companies covered by the measures.
The Guidelines drawn up by FISE Assoambiente centre on the MOG or organizational models, a preventive control system, which starts from a risk analysis, identifies the types of offences an organization is potentially subject to and defines an adequate system of prevention and control.
Among the main objectives of the organizational models is the identification of activities where offences may be committed, the provision of specific protocols aimed at programming the forming and the implementation of company decisions regarding the prevention of offenses, and the introduction of a disciplinary system to punish non-compliance with the measures indicated in the model.

With the cooperation of Certiquality, FISE Assoambiente has produced its own Guidelines to support, via guidelines and measures drawn from company practices, companies in the identification of “potentially sensitive” activities which may lead top management to assume culpable conduct; among these, the planning of disposal/transport operations, the handling of incoming and outgoing flows, environmental monitoring (soil, water and air), the management of contests and calls-for-tender and plant maintenance.
«In addition to concretely promoting legality in the waste management market - said the President of FISE Assoambiente, Giulio Manzini - the Guidelines wish to foster trust and protect the reputational capital and image of the companies that operate in the sector, rendering their reliability in the calls for tender and in general in their relations with other public and private entities openly verifiable».