Assessment of water consumptions in small mediterranean islands' primary schools by means of a long-term online monitoring

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Characteristics and adsorption capacities of low-cost sorbents for wastewater treatment: A review

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Water and wastewater management in the treatment process of a Roman fullonica

The aim of this paper is to study the treatment process of a Roman fullery ( fullonica) with particular attention to the water and wastewater management system. Remains of several fullonicae have been documented at Pompeii and Herculaneum (Campania, Southern Italy), Ostia and Rome (Latium region, Central Italy), Florence (Tuscany, Central Italy), etc. The common academic perception of Roman fullonicae is significantly influenced by the fullonica of Stephanus (I 6, 7) in Pompeii, which is assumed to be a paradigmatic case study in this paper. The use of urine as an alkaline chemical agent in the soaping phase of the filling treatment process was overstated, with there also being no evidence of the fact that fullers collected their urine by means of vessels in front of their workshops, as usually reported. Thus, it is not clear how the Roman fullers collected and transported the urine they used in the fulleries. Finally, the rinsing phase can be considered a clear example of water reuse

Using an innovative criteria weighting tool for stakeholders involvement to rank MSW facility sites with the AHP

The main aim of this study was to verify the efficacy of using an innovative criteria weighting tool (the “priority scale”) for stakeholders involvement to rank a list of suitable municipal solid waste (MSW) facility sites with the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique known as analytic hierarchy process (AHP). One of the main objectives of the study was to verify the behaviour of the “priority scale” with both technical and non-technical decision-makers. All over the world, the siting of MSW treatment or disposal plants is a complex process involving politicians, technicians as well as citizens, where stakeholders who are not effectively involved strongly oppose (or even obstruct) the realization of new facilities. In this study, in order to pursue both the technical (select the best site) and social aims (all the stakeholders have to give their aware contribution), the use of the “priority scale” is suggested as a tool to easily collect non-contradictory criteria preferences by the various decision-makers. Every decision-maker filled in “priority scale”, which was subsequently uploaded in the AHP tool in order to indirectly calculate the individual priority of alternatives given by each stakeholder (not using group aggregation techniques). The proposed method was applied to the siting of a composting plant in an area suffering from a serious MSW emergency, which has lasted for over 15 years, in the Campania Region, in Southern Italy. The best site (the “first choice”) was taken as the one that appeared the most times at the first place of each decision-maker ranking list. The involved technical and non-technical decision-makers showed the same behaviour in (indirectly) selecting the best site as well as in terms of the most appraised criteria (“absence of areas of the highest value for natural habitats and species of plants and animals”). Moreover, they showed the same AHP inconsistency ratio as well as the same behaviour in comparison with a “balanced decision-maker” (who assigns identical weights to all the considered criteria). Therefore, the proposed criteria weighting tool could be widely as well as easily used for stakeholders involvement to rank MSW facility sites (or other kinds of alternatives) with the AHP or with other MCDM techniques, taking or not into consideration group aggregation methods

Domestic Separation and Collection of Municipal Solid Waste: Opinion and Awareness of Citizens and Workers

The state of the art on Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management is based on the domestic separation of materials produced. After domestic separation, the resident has to transfer the separated materials to the MSW manager through the hands of collection workers. It is exactly at this stage that an end-use product changes its status and property becomes waste. This paper analyzes and compares the opinions and awareness of citizens and kerbside collection workers on this subject by means of two structured questionnaires in the city of Mercato San Severino (about 22,000 people), in Southern Italy

Using MCDA and GIS for hazardous waste landfill siting considering land scarcity for waste disposal

The main aim of this study was to develop a procedure that minimizes the wasting of space for the siting of hazardous waste landfills as part of a solid waste management system. We wanted to tackle the shortage of land for waste disposal that is a serious and growing problem in most large urban regions. The procedure combines a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach with a geographical information system (GIS). The GIS was utilised to obtain an initial screening in order to eliminate unsuitable areas, whereas the MCDA was developed to select the most suitable sites. The novelty of the proposed siting procedure is the introduction of a new screening phase before the macro-siting step aimed at producing a “land use map of potentially suitable areas” for the siting of solid waste facilities which simultaneously takes into consideration all plant types. The issue of obtaining sites evaluations of a specific facility was coupled with the issue of not wasting land appropriate to facilitate other types of waste management options. In the developed case study, the use of an innovative criteria weighting tool (the “Priority Scale”) in combination with the Analytic Hierarchy Process was useful to easier define the priorities of the evaluation criteria in comparison with other classic methods such as the Paired Comparison Technique in combination with the Simple Additive Weighting method

Water and wastewater management in the treatment process of a Roman fullonica

The aim of this paper is to study the treatment process of a Roman fullery ( fullonica) with particular attention to the water and wastewater management system. Remains of several fullonicae have been documented at Pompeii and Herculaneum (Campania, Southern Italy), Ostia and Rome (Latium region, Central Italy), Florence (Tuscany, Central Italy), etc. The common academic perception of Roman fullonicae is significantly influenced by the fullonica of Stephanus (I 6, 7) in Pompeii, which is assumed to be a paradigmatic case study in this paper. The use of urine as an alkaline chemical agent in the soaping phase of the filling treatment process was overstated, with there also being no evidence of the fact that fullers collected their urine by means of vessels in front of their workshops, as usually reported. Thus, it is not clear how the Roman fullers collected and transported the urine they used in the fulleries. Finally, the rinsing phase can be considered a clear example of water reuse

Public opinion and awareness toward MSW and separate collection programmes: a sociological procedure for selecting areas and citizens with a weak level of knowledge

The principal aim of this study was to define and apply a procedure based on a structured questionnaire survey useful to analyze the people’s environmental knowledge in order to select the areas and age groups with a low level of knowledge in a municipality (in Southern Italy) and, therefore, suggest a specific educational campaign for each. The detailed sampling procedure made it possible to carry out a meticulous statistical analysis of the results. The youngest and oldest people showed the lowest level of awareness for each district. A high level of education did not necessarily imply a high level of environmental awareness as well as a greater acceptance of MSW facilities. The satisfaction level of the recycling program was higher amongst the oldest age group. All the citizens in the several areas were unanimous in pointing out the presence of dirt in the street as the main shortcoming of the bring separate collection program. Only the youngest age group self-criticised, considering that they revealed a low level of participation to the separate collection program. While, the oldest people retaining them less influential, claimed that the citizens were not responsible for the failure of the separate collection program. The prevailing opinion of the sample was that people protested against the construction of waste facilities because they were not well-informed, with the most significant opinion of all the age subdivisions being that incineration is a hazardous treatment. The presence of criminal organizations was indicated as the main reason why the Campania Region suffers a serious solid waste emergency. While, the percentage of people pointing their finger at politicians increases with the average age of the respondents with there being a very strong correlation (r2 = 0.9903)