A Switch-back Situation

This weekend we went on our second overnight trip to see the middle of the island as well as the east coast. It was a much longer bus ride this time with far too many switch-backs to keep track. We went up and down the mountains so many times that I just had to close my eyes and pretend I wasn't in the bus anymore. I'm just thankful that I never got carsick enough to actually be sick. Although, I felt very close to it.

The first stop we made was to the Museo della Vita e delle Tradizioni Popolari Sarde, which translates to the Museum of the Life and of the Popular Sardinian Traditions. The museum was really neat because it showed many of the traditional clothes, jewelry, and customs of the different regions on the island of Sardegna. One of the important things that we saw there were the traditional outfits during the time of carneval which were very interesting but disturbing as well. The shepherds outfits resembled those of animals, and they would wear them while walking in the streets to perform. I personally thought they were very dark and had an eerie air about them, but at the same time I was amazed at the thought that something like that survived for so many years. The outfits differed from place to place even though they all lived on the same island which shows how much the perception of geography has changed throughout the years.

Traditional outfits from different Sardinian regions

Carneval costumes with shepherds dressed as sheep

After the tour, we went to eat lunch with the shepherds at a traditional style lunch. It was different than I had expected because it was much more touristy with a huge group of older Italians sitting with us. It made sense after I thought about how many people would like to experience something like a traditional shepherd meal, but it still wasn't what I was expecting. We ate multiple courses of meat, bread, and cheese with no silverware on a small wooden board. Afterwards, we enjoyed one of the best oranges I have ever had and some of the traditional music performed by the shepherds. Their singing was very earthy and made me feel timeless in the sense that the music has existed for so many generations and yet is still very much the same. We then participated in "dancing" as a group with the older Italian tourists. None of us knew what was going on, and that was the best part. Our lack of Italian didn't matter. Their English wasn't important. It was just fun.

First course of our meal, salami, bacon, bread, and smoked cheese (not pictured)

Dancing?

Walking around was an order after eating so much food. We drove down the mountain to the town of Orgosolo which is famous for the many murals that adorn its streets. Down every alley and around every corner, there would be a mural with its own story to tell. Some would be of famous people and famous quotes, others would be very political in nature. Others would be so realistic that they looked like real pictures while others were abstract enough to not understand at first glance. They would tell stories of what happened around the world as well as just in Italy. The art was amazing and for such a small town on a hill, it seemed so perfect.

One of the murals down a side street

We arrived at the hotel after walking around and decided it would be a great idea to go on an adventure and hike the mountain that our hotel rested on right before dinner. After making a couple wrong turns, we made it to a look out point that reminded me of Colorado. Just hiking again took me back to the nature that surrounded me growing up. Even though I was never THAT much into hiking as many people were in Steamboat, it still reminded me of when I was younger. It was a nice change from all of the towns and cities that I've become accustomed to in the past year and slowed down time to a near stop.

View of the mountains from the hotel patio, top right rock where we climbed (I think)

View from the top of the hike

The next morning we went on a beach extravaganza where we spent the entire day on either a beach, boat, or bus. We used a type of tourist-boat circuit that would pick up and drop off people at different locations about every hour which means that we saw a lot of different places in a short amount of time. The first stop was at the Grotto del Bue Marino which translates to the grotto of the monk seal. Unfortunately, the monk seals that used to come into the cave about 30/40 years ago to give birth no longer inhabit the island or any part of Italy. They can only be seen in other parts of the Mediterranean such as Africa, Turkey, and Greece. The cave itself is massive, about 8 km, and we only saw a very small piece. There were no photos allowed inside due to copyrights on the cave.

Entrance to the Grotto del Bue Marino

First beach

After the cave, we hopped back on the boat to visit our first beach which was sand/rocks and crystal blue water. No matter where we were, the water was crystal clear.  It was glassy and very deceptive when trying to determine depth. I felt as if I had just stepped into a postcard yet one hundred times better. The next place we stopped at was farther along the rocky coast, and what was harder to believe was that this beach was better than the first. This beach was covered in small perfect white pebbles that seemed harmless yet hurt with every step to walk on. We took advantage of the rocks and deeper water to conquer our fears of heights and jump. It was an amazing day even though the sun only made an appearance for the boat ride back home. We all slept on the long bus ride back "home" to Cagliari with slightly tanned faces and salt covered bodies being all that remained from the beaches we had left.

View from the second beach

Cliffy coastline

Landfilling by Sardinia

One of the waste trucks

Today, we visited a landfill outside of the city named Ecoserdiana. Originally it was a municipal solid waste facility (MSW) which means that all of the trash that the regular population creates went there. In the year 2008, it was non-renewed for MSW and now it only deals with industrial waste. Not having taken a lot of classes about landfilling or dealing with solid waste made this tour a bit harder for me to understand in terms of processes and exactly how everything is done. The lecture in class did help the day before, but going into the tour I was unsure of how much of that information I absorbed.

Top view of the landfill, right side is half of the old MSW landfill
while the left is the other side of the MSW being covered with industrial waste

The darker grey is bottom ash from incineration while the light grey is from the top

Anyways, what I found the most interesting was the history of the facility as well as how they are preparing for the future. The landfill itself is actually 40 acres and contains six different landfills. There is a lot of preparation of the area that goes into a landfill, such as lining and clay in order to make sure the waste is contained. Landfills produce leachate which is a liquid that is produced from rainwater or from the waste itself that has been contaminated. Since the facility used to deal with more MSW, there were a lot more organic products in the waste meaning that methane gas was being produced. This gas was then transported down the road through piping and used as biofuel to create energy. The facility still produces biofuel, but since the facility can no longer handle MSW and deals mostly with waste from incineration, there is less biogas being produced. Yet, they can still extract methane from the MSW below. The incineration waste is actually being placed on top of an old MSW landfill which I thought was pretty interesting creating a sort of two-story landfill. The methane gas that is collected is then transported down the road through the pipes where it is converted into energy. All of the energy is sold back into the grid. Currently, they are looking at putting in and anaerobic digestion plant near the biogas facility where they would handle organic waste in order to be able to turn more biogas from the anaerobic digestion into energy. This would compensate for the methane gas that will eventually run out from the landfill. They also have a solar farm there producing energy. Both solar and biogas have incentives from the government, but solar has more of an incentive because it's a much cleaner process.

Data monitoring tower for the landfill

Biogas to energy facility

The idea of having so many different facilities near each other in a type of district is really neat I think. A lot of the different processes can relate to each other and work towards creating more renewable and sustainable energy and provide more sustainable waste management. One system could provide energy for another system and so on. Having a system like the one that Ecoserdiana is planning on creating would help the USA when it comes to waste management. After learning about how the USA manages waste, we could definitely benefit from following the lead of the EU. Maybe Italy would be a decent starting point since no one can compete with the Germans when it comes to waste management. Also, fun fact, the engineers who were in charge of both the landfilling and the biogas turning into energy were women.

Welcome to our classroom!

No Extra Salt Needed

This weekend was absolutely amazing where we got to see the island in an entirely new perspective. We traveled outside of the city for an overnight on the west side of the island where we enjoyed the history of the island and the farming lifestyle.

Outside of the port, view of the water and Pan di Zucchero

On Saturday morning, we traveled to the western side of the island to visit an old port called Porto Flavia that was once connected to a mine. It was created in order to be competitive with another company back when many different metals were being mined in the island. Instead of having to take the metals far away from the mine, they created a port inside of the mountain. It was cool to be able to see inside of the mine, yet I could never imagine having to work inside the darkness like that. The view from the port as well as just the coast was amazing as well. The ocean here is beautiful with crystal clear waters where you can see the bottom. We didn't enter the water, but still just to be able to stare at it for a few minutes was amazing.

Learning about the history of the port from out guide

After the mine, we enjoyed a similar lunch to our giant dinner with tons of seafood and course after course after course. It seemed like never-ending food, and not being a huge fan of seafood didn't make the food stop. I did try almost everything, but the taste of fish is still not favorite. We got back on the bus after the meal and drove to Tempio di Antas where we saw a restored structure that was created in the Roman style on top of an older structure. Many people have visited Sardinia over the years and tried to take control of the island because of its position in the Mediterranean and recently there have been discoveries on the island (well, just recently released) that would change the history of the Mediterranean and the role Sardinians played. After our long day, we went to the place we spent the night which was an agriturismo place that had a farm but also a bed and breakfast. There, we enjoyed another great meal (the food here is way too good) and the stars that aren't very apparent in the city.

Tempio di Antas

Agriturismo Sa Perda Marcada

Sunday we spent the morning enjoying breakfast at the agriturismo place and then received a cooking lesson from the owner's daughter. The first thing we had to make was called malloreddus which is a Sardinian gnocchetti. All 20 of us had to take the pasta dough we were given, roll it out into a thin rope, and then take little bit of it and press it into a shaper to make a sort of curled, ribbed piece of pasta. The result looked like this:

Malloreddus

Seadas/seabadas

It seemed like we were making pieces of pasta for a while, but working as a team to make all of the pasta that we would later eat was a lot of fun. I think it's easy to forget where food comes from because a lot of the time, we just go to the supermarket and buy whatever we need or want. This is especially true where I'm from in Colorado because the majority of our food is transported into the mountains. We couldn't produce it ourselves because of the weather and climate, so being able to make food using ingredients from the farm such as the eggs from the chickens and tomatoes from the garden for sauce was pretty neat. After making all of the pasta, we then made a traditional Sardinian dessert called seadas/sebadas. It started off with dough and from there we rolled it out to make a thin sheet. In the past, they used rolling pins, but we used a Kitchen Aid with a pasta dough rolling attachment. It wasn't the most traditional part, but it does reflect the change in the times and even with the help of the appliance the dessert took longer than the pasta. After rolling out the dough into a thin sheet, a pile of fresh goat cheese was added on top with lemon zest. The dough was rolled back onto the cheese in order to make a sort of ravioli and then sealed with a fork once removing the extra dough. This was then fried and served with honey on top. From there, the owner and her family cooked and prepared out meal and the result was delicious! One thing that I found really interesting was that Sardinian cooking doesn't use a lot of spices. For example, in a tomato sauce there is usually only onion and some basil and maybe garlic if you like it. Yet, it tastes amazing and much better than many other tomato sauces. This can only be due to the quality of the ingredients they have here on the island. They make things simple because they don't need to add anything else.

Finished pasta with tomato sauce

Fried seada with honey

After the cooking lesson, we headed to the beach for an hour where I personally got covered in a layer of salt. No wonder all of the sea food here is never salted. The Mediterranean provides enough! Now, time to get back to class and continue to explore the city of Cagliari.

Beach!

Trash(y) Photos

Trash bin at the university, no sorting

This past week we have looked at many different things involving both the cultural aspects of Sardegna as well as the waste management of the island. In order to fully understand how to improve the waste management and resource recovery system here and in other places around the world, we had to get an idea of how the system actually worked. When thinking about it, it seems quite simple. You might have a wrapper for you sandwich and once you eat that sandwich, you put the wrapper in the trash. Poof! Gone forever. Yet, how does the system itself work? Through pictures, we as a class tried to find out more about the Cagliari waste management and how it differs from ours in the USA.

Five different bins for five different types of waste.
From left to right: paper/cardboard, plastic, regular waste, organic, and glass 

One of the main things I noticed was how there are main collection bins everywhere. People must take the trash from their houses to one of the communal collection sites to throw their trash away. Most of the trash sites only have about 2 to 3 bins, one for just regular trash, and one for paper products or plastic. In larger, more populous locations, there are more bins which include the normal waste, paper products, glass, plastic, and organic waste. There is no curb-side pick up currently, but in September, the entire city will switch over to curb-side collection. I personally think that this will help reduce the amount of waste because it will allow for the waste to be of a better quality. When I say better quality, I mean that there won't be, for example, a ton of plastic bottles or paper products in the mixed trash. When there is less contamination of the recyclables, less energy goes into treating them and also higher quality products can be produced from this higher quality waste. With people being in charge of their own trash and sorting it, I think that there will be more positive benefits than not in terms of waste reduction. However, it will take some time to get used to and will involve more people working around the city as well as troubleshooting of space issues of where to put all of the bins. I also think it would be difficult to adjust to the new system as a resident. Later in the month we will get the opportunity to talk to a representative of the company that will be helping to start this new collection system and learn more about the problems that might occur and how they might solve them.

The more bins, more use. This is located in Piazza Yenne
that has many different restaurants and is always busy with tourists and locals.

Old trash can found in the plaza

People must go to a receptacle in the area in
 order to dispose of their waste

Many other items are left outside the bins

In more residential areas, a smaller version of the sorting system.
The green one is glass and cans.

Another style of sorting system

Collection truck, where frequency of collection
depends on the type of waste 

As a side note, it was funny seeing everyone's reaction around us when we immediately took out our cameras to take pictures of trash around the city. It was as if someone had throw a ball for a dog, but instead given trash to a group of engineering student in Italy.

Paper Please

Today, we went on our first technical visit to see three different facilities that serve the people of Cagliari and surrounding areas. These facilities are located about 20-30 minutes outside of the city and in a more industrial district. For those unfamiliar with my trip, I am currently taking a class involving resource recovery and waste management and different policies involved abroad.

High-quality paper from industry to be recycled

Finished paper product ready to be sold

Paper-water pulp mixture

The first place that we went to was a paper and cardboard recycling facility whose end product was the corrugated part of corrugated cardboard, white paper, and other paper products such as paper bags. Most of the product that the facility produces, about 98-99%, is the corrugated cardboard/brown paper product because it is created from the societal paper waste which can be a mix of many different types of paper products. The other 1-2% of the recycling facility's production is high-quality white paper. This percentage is so low because high-quality paper must be used in order to make high-quality paper. It cannot be produced from the mix of paper products that is found in the societal waste because of the nature of the paper. Therefore, it is produced less and must be made from paper waste from industry. Today when we visited, they were creating the high-quality white paper. It is formed by going through a process that starts by mixing the paper with water creating a type of paper-water soup mixture called pulp. This is then run through a series of different sieves to make sure that all contaminants, for example binder pieces or staples, are removed from the product. Once all contaminants are removed, the water starts to be removed from the mixture slowly using gravity, pressure, and heat. The final paper is then collected and cut even on all sides and re-rolled onto cardboard rolls in order to be sold to different companies. I really enjoyed seeing this entire process first hand because paper is big part of my everyday life as a student and everywhere in our lives. I like knowing that even though I am surrounded by the use of paper, this process is fairly simple and that many places, such as the USA, can reproduce the same kind of facility in order to conserve resources.

Fertilizer after decomposition

The next place that we visited was a compost facility. In the EU, it is illegal to put any type of organic waste into a landfill or incineration process. Therefore, the bio-waste must be dealt with in a different way, and one of these ways is composting. This facility receives both yard and food waste from the surrounding area and creates a fertilizer that is sold back in bulk to different places in the community. The waste comes to the facility pre-sorted, meaning that the yard waste (branches from the city, grass, etc.) and food waste (personal kitchens, restaurants, etc.) is separate. In order to create a good fertilizer a certain percentage of yard waste and food waste must be used. This mixture is sorted in order to remove plastic bags, plastic, glass, and any other contaminants. Once sorted, it goes through an oxygen and a turning process which are used to speed up decomposition. It is then moved outside where it will continue to decompose for 60 days. After this period, the quality of the fertilizer is tested in a lab and is ready to sell once the results are positive. Once getting past the smell of the facility, I thought it was really interesting because it's something that's not really talked about in the USA. I've heard of composting before, but not of any facilities that do it. One place that I have seen a food scrap bin is at my grandma's house in California, but I never really considered where the scraps go after the bin. I think that it's definitely something the USA should pursue more because of the benefits to different agricultural industries and the reduction of gases such as methane, but I can see how the process of implementing a composting program would be difficult. The cost of processing bio-waste is higher than many other types of recycling due to the nature of the product. You have the cost of bins because bio-waste must be collected separately from other waste and the cost of pick up, which must be high than any other type of collection because no one wants smelly garbage in their house for more than a couple of days. Currently, the city of Cagliari has general community dumps located on the streets, but they will be starting home collection by September. It will definitely change how the waste management system function and hopefully with help them produce less waste that has to be incinerated or landfilled.

WTE facility

Solid waste to be incinerated

The last facility we visited was a WTE or waste to energy place than took regular municipal solid waste and also industrial waste and turned it into energy using incineration. What I thought was the most interesting about the plant was how they actually produced enough electricity to power all of the facilities in the area, such as the compost facility and themselves, while still selling the remaining electricity back to the electric company. It was definitely not the cleanest process or the safest especially with all the chemicals that were involved, but it still reduced the amount of waste that went into a landfill. Many landfills are preferred in the USA due to cost, but in Europe there isn't the space for them. This has led the EU to create strict policies and regulations on waste and allowed them to find alternatives to landfilling which the USA should follow in my opinion.

Control room of WTE facility

Today was pretty exhausting, and thinking about it, many people wouldn't have enjoyed it too much. For me, it really interesting. I take this as a good sign since I haven't really taken any classes in civil engineering yet. Although it isn't the most glamorous part of the island, it's still very important in order to keep Sardenga beautiful for years to come, like the beach we visited over lunch!

Cavallini and Nuraghe

Here are some picture from the culture excursion we went on on Sunday. We visited Casa Zapata, Barumini, a nuraghe, and Parco della Giari. Nuraghe are structures found all of the island of Sardenga. They're old stone structures whose exact purpose is unknown. Around 30,000 are though to have existed, but now only about 7,000 are left due to people taking the stones for other purposes throughout the years. We visited the largest nuraghe, and also the nuraghe that happened to be the structural base for Casa Zapata.

Church right in front of Casa Zapata

Nuraghe that Casa Zapata was built on

Largest nuraghe in Sardenga

View from the top of the nuraghe, would have been houses

Inside the nuraghe, one of the four towers

After touring the nuraghe, we went hiking on the volcanic plateau created into a park called Parco della Giari. It is about 30 sq. miles, and from here we hiked around and saw the wild cavallini of Sardenga. Cavallini means little horses in Italian, and they are quite small with the average height being around 4 ft. Their population is only around 700, and they are specific to the island. Besides the great views, we also visited small houses used by the shepherds many years ago. The culture here on the island is interesting because of its diversity from area to area and to have the opportunity to visit many different parts of the island is an amazing.

View from the plateau 

Un cavallino 

Little shepherd house