Fly towards an increasingly sustainable future, with the course set for the achievement of the global challenges of environmental sustainability. The green challenges of the Costa Smeralda are confirmed by the results achieved in 2022 contained in the fourth edition of the Sustainability Report, published yesterday by the airport management company Geasar. The objective is to reduce energy consumption from dirty sources, greenhouse gas emissions, waste of water resources, the use of plastic and waste disposal, promoting recycling and recovery. With the ambition to reach 83 percent by next year, in 2022 waste sorting exceeded 81 percent out of 1,335 tonnes of waste produced.
Plastic free, the Olbia airport, in one year, eliminated 18,000 plastic straws, equal to 3,600 meters, twice the length of the Brooklyn bridge, the plastic saved from replacing dishes with those made of compostable material, from food packaging and from bottles is equal to the square meters of 15 basketball courts and that from 450,000 glasses (stacked) equivalent to four times the height of Mount Everest.
With a view to energy saving, the airport's lighting systems were upgraded and the technological system functional to their efficient management was completed, reducing consumption by 25 per cent. The process of replacing the air conditioning systems was started which, once fully operational, will allow for the total decommissioning of the diesel-powered plants and, for 2023, the construction of a photovoltaic system to be installed on the roof of the car parks and on the passenger waiting canopies has been planned, which will meet 25 per cent of the airport's energy needs.
With the aim of using less and less water from the city aqueduct, 28 mega liters of water were recovered, eight more than in 2021, reused for irrigation or for toilets. Furthermore, despite the fact that 2022 was the record year in the history of the Costa Smeralda, with the reception of over three million passengers, there was a 16 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions produced by the Gallura airport compared to the average of the previous three years, thanks to the policies adopted to optimize the use of resources in the low influx period. And, in the wake of the reduction in CO2 production, in 2022 the Costa Smeralda obtained level 3 of the Airport Carbon Accreditation from Aci Europe.
Furthermore, Geasar is committed to defending the local fauna and reducing the risk of wildlife strike phenomena: in 2022, thanks to constant monitoring, Olbia airport, out of over 40,000 aircraft movements, recorded only 24 bird strikes, especially herring gulls and stone-eyes, of which only three had consequences on flights.
