Bin nights, school lunches and raw milk vending machines were among the unlikely highlights of Jordan Crugnale’s three-month stay in a small Italian town.
By Jordan Crugnale
ABRUZZO, the Apennine to Adriatic central region of Italy, is renowned for its three national parks and more than 35 reserves. It has also been called the greenest region in Europe. Countless abbeys, fortresses, archeological sites and necropolises going back to Neolithic times head the “things to do and see” tourism maps alongside cultural and biodiversity marvels, site-specific fauna and local festas.
This winter, it hit the international headlines with a fatal avalanche at the base of the Gran Sasso (big rock) mountain, home to the world's largest underground research centre for nuclear astrophysics.
The freezing weather also caused power cuts to more than 300,000 people, landslides and road closures. The snow storm even caught the sea level towns by surprise and disrupted inter-regional soccer matches.
Slightly south of these natural disasters, on a different fault line but not immune from that snow storm, is Alfedena, a town of about 800 people where we embedded ourselves in the quotidian life for just under three months over the Italian winter.
Both my parents are from this region – the same province but different villages. We stayed in my grandparents’ little apartment with its beautiful cement tiles scarred in sections from the setting of fires by the German soldiers in World War Two.
Italy itself is in one of its periodic eras of economic turmoil and villages such as Alfedena have been largely emptied of young people who have gone in search of work in urban areas, including in Australia.
In spite of the turmoil, the country and the people have embraced waste and recycling systems that are beyond the wildest dreams of Australia’s most committed recyclers. At waste collection points in central Rome, residents happily separate waste into five large colour-coded bell domes. The umido (organics) dome was brown and omnipresent. This is the holy city, after all, and people seem happy to walk a few hundred metres to their nearest waste point, dropping off small loads on the way to the metro, or on their walk.
After our eight-hour train and bus ride from Rome to Alfedena, usually a two-hour drive, we were greeted by an old family friend, Elisa, a 74-year-old lightning bolt of energy living across the road who not only stocked our fridge prior to our arrival but also took us meticulously through the two-week waste management cycle that was introduced in 2015.
Everyone from children to 90-year-olds was into it. Organics are collected on Mondays and Thursdays; plastics and metals are collected together; glass then paper; and, finally, general dry waste, which is the only item headed for landfill.
With households separating their own waste. the council’s job is much easier. Rather than putting it all in one big bin, with a big truck wriggling around little Italian streets to collect it, then sending it off for sorting, the separated waste is collected door to door by a small truck, with two men.
With 10 collections a fortnight, we seemed to be constantly preparing the different bins to put out. If it all got too much, or we got our days wrong, the “isola ecologica” (ecological island) some 150 metres away had five larger labelled bins where we could take our separated waste. Contamination rates were initially high but cameras have now been installed and education and outreach to the holiday home owners are making a difference. As we say, “Slowly, slowly, they made Rome”.
The declaration of the entire Mediterranean basin as “pre desertification” prompted the organic recycling drive. With the environmental and agricultural situation dire, there is now a national strategy to replenish soils with organic matter.
The Alfedenesi are quite chuffed at being considered progressive. The town council now talks of going the next step to true zero waste with pay-as-you-throw, pay-per-bag or pay-per-bin schemes to increase the rate of waste separation and recycling. This conversation is happening nationwide, in particular in Milan, which has the largest kerbside organics collection scheme in the world, servicing 1.4 million people.
Italy has banned single-use plastic bags so many supermarket outlets opt for compostable bags, which are great to take home and put your organics waste in. If a little village in the mountains can achieve so much, why not here? With an organics collection to start in Bass Coast in September, these would fit snugly alongside the boomerang bags initiative and plastic-bag free Bass Coast.
Briefly, two other things impressed me during our stay.
Milk, straight from the farm
Ten kilometres from Alfedena, in the main town of Castel Di Sangro (population 6500), one of the supermarkets had a milk filling station, one of 1300 around Italy, many outside schools. For 1 euro ($1.30), if you took your own bottle, you could walk away with a litre of fresh raw milk supplied by Vincenzo, a farmer living two kilometres away. A minuscule food footprint, no middle man and no packaging.
Imagine how popular that would be in a dairy region like Gippsland.
Gourmet school lunches
We threw the kids in the local 28-pupil school, Alfedena Scuola Elementare, in the hope that they would meet some local kids and learn some Italian. But we also learnt a few lessons that seem pertinent to Australia.
This small school had its own kitchen and cook. This is common even in larger urban schools where meals are prepared offsite in a shared centralised kitchen, chilled then reheated at the school, or are partially prepared and then cooked at the school.
In Alfedena, the local council sells booklets for 10 school lunches. The seasonal menu, made from local produce, is different each day, on a four-week roster, providing a balance of vegetables, meat, poultry and fish dishes. As an example, week two, Monday: conchiglie (shell pasta) with oil and parmesan, sword fish fillet, green salad, fruit yogurt and apple cake. Or week three, Wednesday: risotto milanese followed by meatballs, mixed salad with fennel, carrots and lettuce, followed by fresh fruit. (We did ask if we could stay for lunch.)
Kinder kids eat first, followed by the elementary kids. They sit together at tables set with crockery and cutlery, all chatting, all with their metaphorical manners hats on. They also help to clear the tables after lunch. Not a sausage roll, hot dog, jam doughnut or flavoured milk in sight. Nor were there any obese children.
It was a big lesson on many levels. Even a trial once a week at a local primary school would be interesting.
Eating and drinking in Italy was a delight. Food was cheap, fresh, tasty and local. Even the service stations had good fresh healthy food. Coffee cost $1.20 at a bench or seated in our local bar; a fresh pastry was even cheaper; and if you ordered a beer it came with three little bowls containing the likes of chips, nuts and olives. Takeaway coffees are rare. You stop, eat or drink and interact; you certainly don’t ingest whilst moving. Walking to the town fountain to get water from the natural spring below is another wonderful memory.
Quality of life
In spite of Italy’s economic turmoil, so many people appreciated arts and culture, understood the new economies of renewables and ecotourism, and valued their land and local food producers. In a country in crisis on so many levels, we were inspired by the resourcefulness, creative thinking and community pride.
Jordan Crugnale was a Bass Coast councillor from 2012-16 and mayor in 2015-16.
ABRUZZO, the Apennine to Adriatic central region of Italy, is renowned for its three national parks and more than 35 reserves. It has also been called the greenest region in Europe. Countless abbeys, fortresses, archeological sites and necropolises going back to Neolithic times head the “things to do and see” tourism maps alongside cultural and biodiversity marvels, site-specific fauna and local festas.
This winter, it hit the international headlines with a fatal avalanche at the base of the Gran Sasso (big rock) mountain, home to the world's largest underground research centre for nuclear astrophysics.
The freezing weather also caused power cuts to more than 300,000 people, landslides and road closures. The snow storm even caught the sea level towns by surprise and disrupted inter-regional soccer matches.
Slightly south of these natural disasters, on a different fault line but not immune from that snow storm, is Alfedena, a town of about 800 people where we embedded ourselves in the quotidian life for just under three months over the Italian winter.
Both my parents are from this region – the same province but different villages. We stayed in my grandparents’ little apartment with its beautiful cement tiles scarred in sections from the setting of fires by the German soldiers in World War Two.
Italy itself is in one of its periodic eras of economic turmoil and villages such as Alfedena have been largely emptied of young people who have gone in search of work in urban areas, including in Australia.
In spite of the turmoil, the country and the people have embraced waste and recycling systems that are beyond the wildest dreams of Australia’s most committed recyclers. At waste collection points in central Rome, residents happily separate waste into five large colour-coded bell domes. The umido (organics) dome was brown and omnipresent. This is the holy city, after all, and people seem happy to walk a few hundred metres to their nearest waste point, dropping off small loads on the way to the metro, or on their walk.
After our eight-hour train and bus ride from Rome to Alfedena, usually a two-hour drive, we were greeted by an old family friend, Elisa, a 74-year-old lightning bolt of energy living across the road who not only stocked our fridge prior to our arrival but also took us meticulously through the two-week waste management cycle that was introduced in 2015.
Everyone from children to 90-year-olds was into it. Organics are collected on Mondays and Thursdays; plastics and metals are collected together; glass then paper; and, finally, general dry waste, which is the only item headed for landfill.
With households separating their own waste. the council’s job is much easier. Rather than putting it all in one big bin, with a big truck wriggling around little Italian streets to collect it, then sending it off for sorting, the separated waste is collected door to door by a small truck, with two men.
With 10 collections a fortnight, we seemed to be constantly preparing the different bins to put out. If it all got too much, or we got our days wrong, the “isola ecologica” (ecological island) some 150 metres away had five larger labelled bins where we could take our separated waste. Contamination rates were initially high but cameras have now been installed and education and outreach to the holiday home owners are making a difference. As we say, “Slowly, slowly, they made Rome”.
The declaration of the entire Mediterranean basin as “pre desertification” prompted the organic recycling drive. With the environmental and agricultural situation dire, there is now a national strategy to replenish soils with organic matter.
The Alfedenesi are quite chuffed at being considered progressive. The town council now talks of going the next step to true zero waste with pay-as-you-throw, pay-per-bag or pay-per-bin schemes to increase the rate of waste separation and recycling. This conversation is happening nationwide, in particular in Milan, which has the largest kerbside organics collection scheme in the world, servicing 1.4 million people.
Italy has banned single-use plastic bags so many supermarket outlets opt for compostable bags, which are great to take home and put your organics waste in. If a little village in the mountains can achieve so much, why not here? With an organics collection to start in Bass Coast in September, these would fit snugly alongside the boomerang bags initiative and plastic-bag free Bass Coast.
Briefly, two other things impressed me during our stay.
Milk, straight from the farm
Ten kilometres from Alfedena, in the main town of Castel Di Sangro (population 6500), one of the supermarkets had a milk filling station, one of 1300 around Italy, many outside schools. For 1 euro ($1.30), if you took your own bottle, you could walk away with a litre of fresh raw milk supplied by Vincenzo, a farmer living two kilometres away. A minuscule food footprint, no middle man and no packaging.
Imagine how popular that would be in a dairy region like Gippsland.
Gourmet school lunches
We threw the kids in the local 28-pupil school, Alfedena Scuola Elementare, in the hope that they would meet some local kids and learn some Italian. But we also learnt a few lessons that seem pertinent to Australia.
This small school had its own kitchen and cook. This is common even in larger urban schools where meals are prepared offsite in a shared centralised kitchen, chilled then reheated at the school, or are partially prepared and then cooked at the school.
In Alfedena, the local council sells booklets for 10 school lunches. The seasonal menu, made from local produce, is different each day, on a four-week roster, providing a balance of vegetables, meat, poultry and fish dishes. As an example, week two, Monday: conchiglie (shell pasta) with oil and parmesan, sword fish fillet, green salad, fruit yogurt and apple cake. Or week three, Wednesday: risotto milanese followed by meatballs, mixed salad with fennel, carrots and lettuce, followed by fresh fruit. (We did ask if we could stay for lunch.)
Kinder kids eat first, followed by the elementary kids. They sit together at tables set with crockery and cutlery, all chatting, all with their metaphorical manners hats on. They also help to clear the tables after lunch. Not a sausage roll, hot dog, jam doughnut or flavoured milk in sight. Nor were there any obese children.
It was a big lesson on many levels. Even a trial once a week at a local primary school would be interesting.
Eating and drinking in Italy was a delight. Food was cheap, fresh, tasty and local. Even the service stations had good fresh healthy food. Coffee cost $1.20 at a bench or seated in our local bar; a fresh pastry was even cheaper; and if you ordered a beer it came with three little bowls containing the likes of chips, nuts and olives. Takeaway coffees are rare. You stop, eat or drink and interact; you certainly don’t ingest whilst moving. Walking to the town fountain to get water from the natural spring below is another wonderful memory.
Quality of life
In spite of Italy’s economic turmoil, so many people appreciated arts and culture, understood the new economies of renewables and ecotourism, and valued their land and local food producers. In a country in crisis on so many levels, we were inspired by the resourcefulness, creative thinking and community pride.
Jordan Crugnale was a Bass Coast councillor from 2012-16 and mayor in 2015-16.
Alfedena’s ecological island, with five labelled bins for sorted waste.