Regular garbage overflows from the "recycling only" bins at the U.S. Navy's support site base in Gricignano in Italy. Between 50 percent and 70 percent of the garbage tossed by residents of the base could be recycled and would help cut down on the amount of garbage added to the already-overfilled dumpsites in the Campania region. (Sandra Jontz/ S&S File Photo)
European edition, Sunday, February 17, 2008
NAPLES, Italy — For Shekita Carter and her family, separating glass, plastics and aluminum was a menial chore, but second nature.
Then they moved to Naples. Suddenly the mundane became a whole lot more important.
“We have a trash problem here, and the less trash we create, the better off we’ll be,” said Carter, who moved onto the Navy’s support site housing complex in Gricignano three months ago.
“It helps out our environment, our future.”
Not everyone on base recycles, in spite of the fact that the base provides collection bins and bags, free of charge, and the contractor built fences in collection areas to separate regular garbage from what can be recycled.
Still, roughly 50 percent to 70 percent of the tons of refuse carted from the support site are of recyclable materials, Francesco Coppola, managing director of Mirabella, said recently. Mirabella is a private company contracted to maintain the support site, leased by the U.S. Navy.
Capt. Floyd Hehe, the base commander, said he doesn’t want to hear residents say, as an excuse for not recycling, that they see trash collectors mix the refuse that residents separated — as in, if the haulers don’t adhere to the practice, why should residents?
“I’ve heard some say it’s all put in the same truck anyway. I say: ‘So what?’ It’s still the right thing to do,” Hehe said Wednesday at a town hall meeting.
Lt. Cmdr. Wendy Snyder, a Navy Region Europe spokeswoman, reminded residents that refuse should be separated into the following categories: paper, plastic/metal, glass and cardboard. Everything else is trash — and there is a lot less of it once the recyclables are removed.
Naples and the Campania region were hit in mid-December with yet another trash crisis. With landfills brimming, trash haulers stopped collecting because there was no place to dump the garbage, burying the city and its suburbs in tons of uncollected refuse.
The Navy base was not untouched by the calamity. A few weeks ago, it took help from the Italian army to haul mounds of garbage that had accumulated for weeks on the support site.
“Now that the trash areas are reasonably clean, [base officials are] working with Mirabella to repair broken fences, move Dumpsters to their correct locations, improve labeling and signage and to clean up in general,” Snyder said.
“Mirabella did purchase 10 additional Dumpsters and will be purchasing another 10 to place in areas most needed.”
Several base residents interviewed recently said they recycled. Some who live in neighboring towns said they do so as well when they can.
April Dozier, who lives in the town of Casal di Principe, said that while she’d like to recycle, the haulers who pick up the garbage from in front of her home don’t offer that service, and she hasn’t found any recycling collection bins near her home.
Typically in Italy, residents must dump garbage in huge bins along the road. Italian officials have also set up domed containers for recycling — yellow for plastic and metal, green for glass and white for paper.
One other way to cut down on trash: The Defense Commissary Agency recently received a new batch of reusable cloth grocery bags, sold for 70 cents each, giving shoppers an alternative to plastic bags.
