Summer 2015: May 2015

I can't believe that every weekend tops the previous... and Sunday has hardly started here!

Rewinding to Wednesday and Thursday of this week we were in school all day learning about sustainable alternatives to landfills. In this, we talked about life cycle assessment, incineration and anaerobic digestion. This blog was intended to let everyone back home know what the heck I am doing in Italy. On a personal level however, I feel obliged to educate my readers about some of the technical material we are learning about so hopefully you will walk away to lead a slightly more sustainable life. Well, that and we have an exam this week so this is helping me study. If you are not interested in learning little tidbits of solid waste management skip the next four paragraphs. If you are, please read on my friend!

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a really cool way to consider things. They cover the entire lifespan of a product to understand that products impact. LCA looks at the material procurement, product manufacturing, use and distribution of that product, and recycling or disposal. This is the type of assessment that is important when considering two options, for example paper or plastic at the grocery store. If you can understand which is the more environmentally friendly option. For this example it is easy because both are free (although in Italy and Ireland they will charge you) but there are also costs that should be considered separately.

Incineration, which I mentioned in my last technical blog, is burning trash in an extremely controlled environment to reduce the size of waste, make the waste inert, and creates a platform to harvest energy from. Also known as Waste to Energy (WTE), these plants are required to comply with air quality regulations and are able to recover energy from burning of the waste. WTE plants are not as common in the United States as they are in Europe, however Massachusetts has 7 solid waste incinerators (go MA!).

Anaerobic digestion is a bit more difficult. Organic waste is treated with not oxygen, and bugs present in the waste and in added soil to eat away at that waste. The bugs act as a biological reactor in multiple stages and decompose the waste that mostly consists of organic carbon. With this, the bugs release methane (CH4 for my chemistry people) which can be recovered for fuel use. Additionally, the product of the anaerobic digestion is very rich and can be added to a composting pile. Anaerobic digestion covers some tricky processes but when successful has a huge potential for resoruce and energy recovery and definitely should be considered an alternative.

At the end of the day on Thursday, Prof. Aldo Muntoni spoke to us more about his research on anaerobic digestion and how it can generate hydrogen fuel cells. This was really interesting work that hopefully can become a prominent alternative for waste disposal.

If you skipped ahead, welcome back! If you kept reading, thank you for your time! Alright, enough technical, here comes the fun part.

This weekend we went on an excursion to the eastern part of Sardinia. It was a lot of time on the bus so our awesome TA/best friend Anna brought strings to make friendship bracelets.

Our first stop was in Nuoro where we went to the Museo Etnografico Sardio, which is the ethnographic museum. Here there were life sized mannequins dressed in traditional Italian clothing for festivals and every day life. There were cases of jewels displayed that were beyond gorgeous. There were also costumes, known as Mamuthone, for men to parade around during carnival (pictured below). These were very scary but also a very interesting tradition specific to the people of Sardinia.

Typical Mamuthone costume

Carnival masks

Museum courtyard

Museum Window

Also in Nuoro we visited la Chiesa della Solitudine, which means the church of solitude. This is also the title of Grazia Deledda's final book. Grazia is the only Italian to win a Nobel Prize for Literture and grew up in Nuoro writing about the people and bandits. She was initially shammed out of town and moved to Rome to live but is now buried in la Chiesa della Solitudine. Here there was also a display of the stations of the cross made out of the Sardinian bread. Although this is little different from the traditional painted bread, it was still beautiful.

Alter of la Chiesa della Solitudine

View of la chiesa (the church) from the alter

Station XV: Resurrection of Jesus Christ

After visiting the church, we went into the mountains and ate lunch with the shepherds. It was my first pig roast I have ever been to. They immediately handed us a wooden board and a beautiful clay cup and served us many round of bread, cheese, sheep and pig. The poor vegetarians on our trip. Following dinner, after being bombarded by a group of Italian who acted like we were on tour for a record breaking album of the year, we listened to the shepherds sing in the traditional Sardinan style. We rounded lunch out with some dancing, views, and bidding farewell to the baby pigs.

Pig on the 'barbie

This view wasn't bad

Huts for the shepherds' guests

This delicious almond dessert

Eli Brown and his ragazza. Paola was jealous.

From lunch we traveled to Orgosolo, which is a village covered in murals. These murals depict historical, cultural and political events worldwide. I think the best part of these murals was the emotion and compassion the portrayed. It was clear that the artists were painting these to educate the world and eradicate or at least bring light to its darkness. The history of these murals comes from the shepherd's children. Originally, these children were not interested in attending school. On teacher decided to use these murals as lessons for the students, teaching them about history. Long story short, it worked and there are beautiful paintings of everything from American Indians, Italian politicians, the Gaza conflict, and many other events. There were so many paintings I have just included a few below.

Speaking against environmental pollution

For Ryan

American Indians

We are all immigrants

Women's rights

As if we weren't tired, the day continued to Hotel Enis Monte Maccione, this little hotel on the side of a mountain. Logically, the first thing we did once we dropped our bags off was to try climb the mountain, like duh. We only made it halfway up but decided to scale a rock to take pictures of one of the most breathtaking views of my life. Note: I feel like I have deemed so much of this trip the best of my life but it truly has been we have seen so much in so little time that has left me in awe.

Post hike moon

Dylan Clark, "no ragazzos"

The whole hiking experience felt a little like going out to play when we were younger, they told us to be back by 8 pm for dinner and it was 7:45 before we turned back on our hour long hike up. Since we were late, had time only to wash our hands before dinner but we were famished. Dinner was delicious, especially after we snuck away for some sunset pictures. I think my new favorite meat is rabbit. It was by far the most buttery, lean, meat I have ever tasted. My mouth is watering just thinking of it now.

Series of Sunset Photos:

Since our hike that evening was so wonderful, we decided to wake up at 5 am and do it again for sunrise. Best decision yet! We scaled the mountains before first light with iPhone flashlights (apparently in this day and age we don't keep flashlights). There was one wrong turn, 3 layers of shedding, and we made it back to our lookout point! The views were spectacular. It was a wonderful way to greet the day. I could go on and on about how amazing this was and show you all of the wonderful pictures we took but that wouldn't do it justice. I guess you had to be there.

Series of Sunrise Photos:

First Light

The way up the mountain

Eli Brown, no ragazzi

As it gets lighter

Ted found his happy place

The other side of the mountain

My best friend <3

A little more love for the other side

After leaving the hotel, we headed to the Gulf of Orosei for a day of boats, caves, beaches, and rock jumping. The first stop was to Grotta del Bue Marino, cave of the monk seal. There were no photos allowed once inside the cave but the pictures in my head look great... :)

Me! Alive and well!

Last chance for cave pictures

The second and third stops were to tropical beaches where we swam as much as we possibly could. Again, Anna and I were the last one out of the water. We captured some underwater footage from Audriana's camera that I will post when she downloads them all. These were the most tropical beaches I have ever been on. We did a group jump into the water off a big rock. Some people had a difficult time running across the rock but for me it was like home. I guess I haven't lost all my callus! Finally, we had a nice boat ride back to shore before the three hour bus ride home. In general, it was so nice to be on the water. I definitely missed the rocking of the ocean, the smell of the sea, and even the rocks digging into my feet.

mer-people (left and right) and me (center)

We returned to Cagliari with rosy cheeks and bright smiles. Today is our free day but we have to catch up on all the homework we didn't do this weekend so it feels just as busy.

Thank you for reading!

Before I begin, I want to review the basic waste management hierarchy. Everyone should strive on a personal level to follow these steps to effective waste management. There will be more on this later but I just wanted to remind you all to (in order of importance):
1. Reduce
2. Reuse/Recycle
3. Energy Recovery
4. Landfill (AKA final disposal)

The EPA's Solid Waste Management Waste Hierarchy.

Monday of this week, Memorial Day was very exciting, we had our first group project due and ate dinner at a TexMex place (we had some mediocre ribs but also a delicious burrito and an actual TON of french fries)! My group was tasked on presenting policy of end of life vehicles (ELV) and end of life tires (ELT). The goal was to consider the policy and regulations of the European Union to the United States... Exciting stuff! We determined in general that European Union has a more advanced policy to handle the ELV it produces, but the European Union's policy for ELT focuses on landfill reduction, which should only occur as a final resort. Additionally, we found that the United States, for our presentation and others, was often lacking in federal policy, but there were measures implemented on some state levels that could be spread throughout the country.

One of my favorite presentations was on organic waste, such as food waste. Fun fact: since the installation of the garbage disposal, the fraction organic waste has decreased. However, even since this decrease, organic waste is the easiest waste to biodegrade and in doing so produces methane. Methane can then be recovered and converted into energy. Municipalities around the world are recognizing this neat science and are trying to harness it. This also sparks the debate of whether or not organic waste should be landfilled, which poses a question for the waste management hierarchy. Should organic waste be recycled to biogas by putting it in a landfill, or should it be composted to create a recycled product? It is impossible to create a blanket solution to this problem because every circumstance is very different from the other. We learned more about this dilemma Tuesday that I will go into more detail.

Tuesday we visited the Ecoserdiana landfill before having my second meal of ribs and a burger., much more delicious Anyways, we were given a tour by two female engineers (WAHOO!) and were shown the landfill, monitoring equipment, and biogas fuel generation plant. We saw a lot so I am just going to highlight a few things. There were many landfills on this site, most of which accepted municipal solid waste (the waste generated by the average Joe) at some point, however the only current active landfill accepts designated waste. Designated waste is waste that is inert, such as nonhazardous construction and demolition waste or ashes from an incinerator plant. On every landfill was an extensive biogas and leachate collection system. Biogas is the methane mixture of gas emitted from the landfill and leachate is any liquid that runs off from the landfill, aka landfill juices. These are meant to collect both the leachate and biogas so they can either treated or transformed into energy. Additionally, we could see monitoring equipment such as groundwater wells and air quality monitoring. These measures make sure that the landfill is contained within it's lining. Finally, we saw the energy conversion plan where the discharged gas is burned, electricity is created, transformed, then sold onto the energy grid. The equipment used to generate this power was comparable to the powerplant last semester's Air Quality class visited on Northeastern's campus.

I think an interesting question this experience posed was whether municipal solid waste, trash from the average person, should be added for fuel production or composted for reuse. According to the EPA's hierarchy pyramid, the composting is the better solution. The trend is for the organic matter to be processed separately to be reused, however this cuts into the landfills ability to create methane, the energy source. Knowing this engineering agrees with Ecoserdiana 's consideration to add a anaerobic digestor (speedy composting technology) to their site to maintain biogas production. This is a problem that cites will continually face as they try to find environmentally friendly solutions without ignoring the cost and applicable policies.