Hallie Tyner, 9, and Daichi McKinney, 8, recycle papers from their class at Livorno Unit School in Camp Darby, Italy. The students, part of Meg Del Moro’s combined second- and third-grade class, spend the school year learning about the importance of recycling. Del Moro adds the children often use the paper in the recycle box as scratch paper whenever they run out of paper. (Joyce Costello / U.S. Army)
NAPLES, Italy — There’s no financial savings on the Navy’s part that might spur Americans living on Navy bases in Italy to recycle their garbage. So leaders are banking on a moral incentive.
“We want people to recycle because it’s what we should do. It’s good for the environment,” said Kelly Burdick, spokeswoman for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Europe and Southwest Asia, which is in charge of contracting the collection of bases’ garbage.
For its facilities in Italy, whether on leased property or land the Navy owns, the Navy pays the same amount for garbage collection, no matter how much of the refuse might be recyclable — a practice that differs from some contracts held by other U.S. military services in northern Italy.
“For recycling, we do not have separate line item; the cost is all rolled into one,” Burdick said.
Overall, the Navy pays nearly $1.6 million a year for garbage removal from its properties in Naples, Sigonella and Gaeta. Here is how it breaks down:
The Navy pays about $200,000 a year for trash removal from the Capodichino base of Naval Support Activity Naples, near the international airport. Capodichino is considered the “working base,” with offices for the base and numerous tenant commands, and university offices, health clinic, air operations and the Capo Inn transient lodging. A barracks on Capodichino is home to about 300 sailors.
The Navy pays about $667,000 a year to landlords for several leased properties in the Naples area, including the support site base in Gricignano, Carney Park recreational facility and several off-base government housing projects called parcos. The fee also includes the Monte Orlando base in Gaeta.
Mirabella, an Italian construction and maintenance company, is the landlord for Naples’ support site, the main housing base. It also has the Navy Exchange and commissary, main hospital, schools, community center, chapel, Navy Lodge, a restaurant, bowling alley and pub, and movie theater. Roughly 2,600 people live on the support site, not counting guests in the Navy Lodge.
Francesco Coppola, managing director of Mirabella, said that while the amount is more than it receives from the Navy’s contractural fee, which was set several years ago, it makes a profit from the rent it collects from the Navy. “We may lose in some areas, but we may earn in something else,” Coppola said.
When Naples was hit by another trash crisis in mid-December (because local landfills were full) and uncollected garbage piled up on the support site, Mirabella acted to help alleviate some of the mess. It built a temporary holding site near the town of Gricignano to hold trash both from the Navy base and the nearby town.
The Navy pays about $500,000 a year for trash removal from the two bases at Sigonella: Naval Air Station I and Naval Air Station II. NAS I is the support base, housing the hospital, Navy Exchange and commissary, community center, gym, library and barracks for about 160 sailors. NAS II has the air terminal and most of the office buildings and barracks for about 390 sailors.
The Navy pays about $215,000 a year for trash removal from two leased housing properties at Sigonella, Marinai and Mineo. The housing areas have roughly 810 occupied units.
