Technical Not...Throwback Thursday

At breakfast Monday morning I realized I made a mistake in my last blog post about last Thursday.

Correction: Last Thursday we visited Campidano Ambiente, a company that coordinates solid waste collection for many municipalities in Sardinia. There, we had a presentation from Luigi Massidda about the company and their services. There were mayors and city officials from the municipalities who use Campidano Ambiente for services. As you may be able to tell from my blogs, I am interested in educating the world about solid waste management. That being said, the question and answer section of our visit was the most interesting to me. We learned about the weekly collections of a variety of waste streams that occur in the municipalities that Campidano Ambiente works for. They provided us detailed calendars that marked collection days and showed us the bins provided to residence for collection. Compared to the bins we have at home, this size may be alarming. I really want to use the first half of this post as a PSA for how much some people are required to reduce their waste generation rates by. It is something that we should all consider to improve our overall waste management that can better the environment. I have included some pictures below for your reference. Please note the scale of these bins.

Note: These are 2/3 the height of the table or less

Sample collection calendar 

Campidano Ambiente

On Monday we visited Villasimius on a sailboat. We explored a lighthouse, crazy rock formations, the beautiful, crystal clear waters, and were slightly threatened but always safe from lightening storms. This was also the first time I have ever eaten a hot meal, in this case it was delicious gnocchi, on a boat. Of course it was delicious. One very intersting thing I learned was that seagulls love cheese and the fish here love bread. The sailors were feeding the seagulls cheese out of their hands and tossing bread overboard to the fish who attacked with piranha like urgency. However, if you try to feed the seagull bread, they were clearly less interested, and the fish seemed to have more difficulty with the cheese and definitely preferred the bread. It made me a little nervous the first time that I was going to get nibbled to pieces but once I overcame that moment of hesitation I was in the water most of the day.

Tuesday we worked on our final group project in the morning and had guest speakers in the afternoon. In our project, we have been tasked with designing a composting plant or anaerobic digestion plant to handle the organic (food/yard waste) aspects of Boston's waste stream. The city recently enacted a bill that requires institutions who produce more than 1 ton of food waste each week to separately handle the waste and send it to one of these plants. With this new legislation these existing plants have a significant increase in business and if regulations extend, this something that could become implemented in the near future. As the project continues I will provide more information.

This afternoon we had two speakers: Dr. Tiziana Lai and Prof. Giovanni De Giudici. Dr. Lai presented on end of life vehicle (ELV) treatment and recycling. This was an interesting presentation that brought the first project in which my group researched. Prof. De Giudici was from the Sardinian environmental protection agency (I am unsure of the proper name, I am not capitalizing this on purpose). Prof. De Giudici talked about managing contaminated mine and military sites. He was also an avid surfer planning on traveling to San Diego next summer for 20 days. This was very familiar story. It was interesting to learn of the past and future plans of the island to clean up their contaminated lands. I am interested in site remediation, so it was interesting to see how these sites implemented technologies to ensure the environmental safety. Although this presentation focused mostly on metal contamination, it has made me think more about my choice of classes for the fall. I am strongly considering switching one of my classes to take an organic environmental pollution class. I have been on the fence for some time but I think it is showing me I am interested enough in site contamination to dip my toes in.

Because we overloaded on technical visits the other weeks, today we had a beach day before returning to work on projects. The beach was beautiful, as usual, and I got to swim all over with a mask and snorkel. Sardinia is the most quasi-tropical place I have ever been so I was unsure what the fish would look like, however they were mostly sandy to clear colored. I brought a lemon to the beach in honor of Melissa Gavin and everyone tried to lighten their hair. The success results are still being talleyed but we all smell a little better.

The next 6 days we have a lot of work ahead of us but it was nice to take today to unwind. I cannot believe our time here is almost over. I have been having an amazing time, am not ready to leave, and at the same time cannot wait to travel after. It is at times overwhelming to consider all of these emotions, but I never lose a sense of gratefulness for how lucky I am to be here.