School's (not) out for the Summer

Monday we finally started classes, not before seeing our Italian friends Sunday night. We spent the evening overlooking Cagliari at Caffe Librarium Nostrum. This bar is a beautiful outdoor patio overlooking the western half of the city, absolutely gorgeous. Best part: no one was late to class the next day!

Monday was a full day of class with some city exploration during the lunch break. We found an amazing art museum, I Musiei Civici di Cagliari. I took some pictures of the public garden it was in but am having technical difficulty accessing them so hopefully I can post them at a later date. After class we took some time exploring the city, found the supermarket, replaced my forgotten leather jacket, and had some dinner.

Tuesday we were assigned our first homework assignment (which requires another post soon) and project. For lunch we wandered to the other side of the city and discovered an Irish pub called Murphy's. Our server didn't speak English and we don't speak much Italian so it was very interesting but we ended up with beef from the USA! In the afternoon we worked on our homework then went exploring with our professor, Annalisa. We first visited a beautiful overlook of the city where Matt tried to throw Ted off the balcony... From there we visited Palazzo Regio then to Cattedrale di Santa Maria. Both were stunning and I have posted some pictures below.

Beautiful artwork on the ceiling of the palace.

 The great hall of the palace where there are still some functions.

This is one of the many beautiful chandeliers in the palace.

Cattedrale di Santa Maria

 Saint Elizabeth, I love you mom!

 Annalilsa Onnis-Hayden, PhD in Environmental Engineering, Unofficial City of Cagliari Tour Guide.

Torre dell'Elefante, great views.

People of Cagliari.

Quaint alley where I am dying to go for a dinner.

Today, Wednesday, we visited a recycling, composting, and incineration (with a small wastewater anaerobic digestion) facilitates.

The recycling facility was completing a special batch of recyclable materials today. There were creating a newspaper like paper to resell. In general, there are two types of paper, high quality paper and lower quality paper. High quality paper mostly comes from offices and universities but the mixed qualities of paper tend to come from residential. Depending on the paper input, there is a different output and effects what you will produce. In general, the paper is sorted then put into an assembly of machines to remove any impurities, create a pulp, then create a final paper. The steps of this process that we saw today are located below.

Paper, baled and unbaled.

Paper being baled.

Pure paper bales ready for today.

Annalisa!

Paper pulper.

Pulper in action.

Cyclone to separate impurities from the paper.

Early example of paper.

Beginning to look like something!

Almost there!

TADA!

Recycling logo with the Sardinian flamingo.

Next we went to the composting plant. Here the composted material consists of organics such as food and yard waste. The waste is held here for at least 90 days, and let me tell you it STANK. I thought the most interesting part of the plant actually came from the business side: 1 ton of waste is sold for 2 euros. This facility is funded by the municipalities and tax payer dollars. From here the waste is sold to agriculture, not in individual packages. Another interesting thing was that the first 30 minutes of rainfall is collected and treated in the onsite wastewater treatment plant. That way the beautiful surrounding lagoon is not polluted from the runoff. There was also a resident dump dog that everyone was concerned was underfed. He seemed really happy though so I am going to hope he is ok.

Finally, we visited the incinerator. Today the plant was shut down due to their detection of radioactive waste (the tools are built to detect really small limits, such as a diaper from someone taking medication with low radiation doses). We were told we were completely safe, much safer than the man who had to dig through the waste to find that radioactive diaper. This was a loud plant and somewhat difficult to hear the tour but I immediately recognized some aspects of the plant from an Air Pollution class I took this past semester. The air control measures included electrostatic participators (ESPs), bag house filters, and other particulate matter control devices. For me, I learned how to design these systems in other classes and it was very exciting to see them in real life. We also learned that shredded tires can be burned but full tires cannot, which I did not know before. In general, this plant generated the energy to power itself and still have energy to sell back to the public.

My camera unfortunately died for these last two plants but if I can figure how to get photos off my phone I will upload them.

I think it the biggest takeaways from today is that important to consider recycling and waste to energy solutions as an alternative to letting our waste sit away in a landfill forever. I hope you read this and will recognize the importance of waste separation and next time choose to compost, recycle, incinerate, or anything that prevents us from filling landfills.

In other news, tomorrow is our day off so I am venturing to do laundry... until next time....