The Usual

Yesterday, we had two guest speakers who were friends or friends of friends of our Professor. It's always fun to have a guest speaker come and talk about the work that they do that relates to topics that we are covering in class. I also enjoy listening to how our Professor knows these people from both the school/professional field and just in a social setting as well. The first guest speaker we had talked about end of life vehicles (ELV). ELV is exactly what it sounds like, dealing with cars after they don't function anymore. The difficulty is dealing with all of the different components that make up a car. The process of dividing the car into separate components in order to ensure that the majority is recycled is first de-pollution, followed by dismantling, shredding, and then automotive shredder residue (ASR). During the first part of the process, parts that can be reused or recycled are collected as well as parts that contain hazardous materials. The parts that contain hazardous materials are disposed of properly and then the ELV continues to dismantling where more parts are reused or recycled. Shredding allows different materials to be recovered such as metal. The ASR is what is left after all that can be recycled or reused is collected. This waste mostly goes to landfills, but they are looking at ways to get even more out of the waste such as producing fuel from it through combustion. I thought it was interesting to look at ELVs once again after a presentation from one of the groups during the beginning of the program. Cars are a big part of our lives in the USA, and most parts of the world, and people never really think about what happens once a car can no longer function.

Another thing that is part of ELV is the disposal of tires. During one of our site visits we saw a pile of shredded tires which have a lot of different applications, just think of an artificial turf field. 

Our other guest speaker works for the government here in Cagliari dealing with remediation of mine sites on the island. There are many old mine sites here on the island with a lot of different chemicals leaking into nearby water and soil. In order to contain these chemicals as much as possible, it's important to remediate a site which can be difficult due geography as many of these sites are along the rocky coasts. I personally thought it was interesting although I'm not sure I would want it to be my career. Many places in Colorado also have to deal with mining waste left behind after many years and seeing how they do it here in Cagliari gave me an idea of how it might look in the USA as well. What I found the most interesting about the work that he does is that a lot of the different contaminated sites just look like part of the scenery. When we were driving to the beach, many of the abandoned mines we passed were either remediated sites or will be in the near future. Much of the landscape looked natural besides the abandoned buildings, but in reality, a lot of the "natural" looking formations were not natural. This was surprising to me because I would never think to see them as anything but part of nature because they had already started to look like the surrounding area. Talk about deceptive!

One of the mines sites we drove by going to the beach earlier in the month

Today we spent another day at the beach. The water is always crystal clear, and since it's June, the weather was beautiful (although a bit windy). It may not seem like we were doing anything but having fun in the sun, which is true for the most part, but it's actually a really big cultural thing here in Sardinia. People during the summer go to the beach for the entire day and just relax. So technically we are doing just what the people here would be doing.

The beach today. Yes, the water was this clear