12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

Summary

An experimental conservation project that was abandoned and almost forgotten about, has ended up producing an amazing ecological win nearly two decades after it was dreamt up.The plan, which saw a juice company dump 1,000 truckloads of waste orange peel in a barren pasture in Costa Rica back in the mid 1990s, has eventually revitalised the desolate site into a thriving, lush forest.That's one heck of a turnaround, especially since the project was forced to close in only its second year – but despite the early cancellation, the peel already deposited on the 3-hectare (7-acre) site led to a 176 percent increase in above-ground biomass."This is one of the only instances I've ever heard of where you can have cost-negative carbon sequestration," says ecologist Timothy Treuer from Princeton University."It's not just a win-win between the company and the local park – it's a win for everyone."Daniel Janzen & Winnie HallwachsThe plan was born in 1997 when Princeton researchers Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached Costa Rican orange juice manufacturer Del Oro with a unique opportunity.If Del Oro agreed to donate part of its land bordering the Guanacaste Conservation Area to the national park, the company would be allowed to dump its discarded orange peel at no cost on degraded land in the park.The juice company agreed to the deal, and some 12,000 tonnes of waste orange peel carried by a convoy of 1,000 truckloads was unceremoniously dumped on virtually lifeless soils at the site.The deluge of nutrient-rich organic waste had an almost instantaneous effect on the fertility of the land."[W]ithin about six months the orange peels had been converted from orange peels into this thick black loamy soil," Treuer told Scientific American."Kind of passing through this gross stage in between of kind of sludgy stuff filled with fly larvae."Daniel Janzen & Winnie HallwachsDespite this promising start, the conservation experiment wasn't to last, after a rival juice manufacturer cal...