Privatizing excrement: the management of organic waste and the cesspit companies in the late nineteenth-century Italian cities

Abstract During the second half of the nineteenth century, traditional urban organic waste collection systems proved inadequate. In Italian cities, the alternative solution was found in the more hygienic system of ‘mobile sewers’. After its appearance in Milan in 1862, this system spread to many other urban centres on the peninsula. It encouraged the introduction of regulations for city cleaning and the emergence of private companies specializing in the use of mobile sewers and the transformation of organic waste into fertilizer or other by-products for sale. This article aims to investigate this evolutionary process prior to the construction of modern sewerage systems.