Kristyn's Travel and Trash Thoughts

Day 3 The third day we split into two groups, one focused on food rescue and the second focused on reuse. I was in the second group and we had a busy day of driving around the region. We visited an anaerobic digestion facility, which had only been open a couple months.The main input is residential food scraps and they use yard waste as a bulking agent. They accept all types of food waste, even raw meat and bones.  First, machines squeeze out the liquids from the food waste, then compost the remaining solids.  Italy has favorable incentives for bio-methane. The gas goes into the high-pressured gas lines to be used as part of the electric market. For the compost, they are testing  different uses, such as a green roof medium.  Waste sent to waste to energy is required to have a certain calorific value. We then visited a compost facility which was very large and impressive. It was a good day, even with the smells and the heat. 

Day 2  We started the day early in the morning to follow a collection truck and see how households set out their items for collection and are picked up. In Milan there are 5 separate containers for collection: organics, cardboard, glass, plastic and metal, and residual waste. This was impressive since most places in the U.S. only have 2 or 3 separate containers. It takes a lot of effort to educate residents on what goes where and to get them to take the time to do it. Having the space for so many containers is also a challenge most of the time. In Milan, the vast majority of households are in multi-family dwellings (apartment buildings/condos), rather than single family, stand-alone homes. Each building has dedicated space to hold the containers.    After a coffee break, we visited the headquarters of the waste company, which I found to be one of the most interesting stops of the study tour. I enjoyed hearing about the history of the company, its operations, and i...

I recently spent  a few days in Milan on a study tour organized by the Natural Resources De fense Council (NRDC), Economia e Sostenibilita (esta), and Novamont. This tour was attended by representatives from five U.S. cities and focused on food waste prevention, rescue, and recycling (compost and bio-gas production). The five cities were Baltimore, Denver, Phoenix, Cleveland, and Oakland. There were two representatives from each city who have some role in food waste prevention in their city. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to represent Baltimore, in my position as a waste reduction coordinator. My co-representative was works for the Planning Department.  While in Milan, w e met with city officials, waste companies, local non-profits, university officials, and others. We observed waste collection in Milan and Trevisio. We visited multiple compost facilities (small and large), an anaerobic digestion facility, a waste sorting facility, and even a diaper recycl...

I have had the opportunity here to meet some amazing people doing some amazing things. Jane Goodall's non-profit, Roots and Shoots has a local group here. I met four young people who have been volunteering with the group for years. They are active in schools throughout the region, teaching students about the environment, leading tree plantings, and organizing all kinds of activities. It was such a pleasure to meet them and to learn about their work. Roots and Shoots volunteers with students at a local school planting trees Bags of corn waiting to be ground into flour We visited a business that processes corn to make corn flour. Most of the waste they produce can be used for animal feed. We also visited a few companies that purchase recyclable materials. One buys plastics, breaks it into small chips, and sells it to a company in Dar es Salaam, which is about 8 hours away. The other bought scrap metal and also sells to a company in Dar es Salaam. Bags of plastic ma...

After I was so excited about seeing monkeys in the distance last week, I've seen them a few times since. More baboons and also other types of monkeys, which is pretty cool. In even more exciting news, I went on a safari on Sunday! Iringa is only a couple hours from the entrance of Ruaha National Park so it was possible to do a day trip there, leaving early in the morning and returning in the evening. I went to the same park last year, but it was a much longer trip then.  This was a really good safari. The highlight of the trip was the sighting of a baby leopard! Leopards are always difficult to see. This was really cool because the leopard baby was right next to our car, just sitting under a tree. We just stared at it for a few minutes before it moved. My guide then started calling other guides to let them know about the sighting, so other cars started coming and were all staring at the spot that the leopard had run to. But after waiting a very long time and not seeing anything, ...

I'm sorry for the delay in posting! I was having issues signing into my blog. Here is a post that I wrote early last week. Later I will write more about all that has happened in the past week! Tuesday (November 6th) was very busy and included visits to a market manager, a street vendor association, a recycling business, a scrap yard, a corn flour manufacturer, and a 22 year-old entrepreneur who started an impressive environmental group/business. We had some really interesting conversations about what kind of waste is generated, how waste is collected and handled, and what the main challenges and opportunities are.  The 22 year-old was really inspiring. His group is collecting waste from households, cleaning office buildings, making compost, gardening, and organizing an environmental campaign in schools. We need more energetic young people like him. The compost facility is really good, since there is not much composting happening here and the majority of the waste is food and...