In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Halwachs approached the Costa Rican orange juice company with an off-wall idea. In exchange for donating some of the untouched woodland to Area de Concerciónguanacaste, a nature reserve located in the country’s northwest, the park allows us to dump the discarded orange peel and pulp for free, and to throw away the highly grazing, largely enforced areas.
A year later, 1,000 trucks were poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 tons of sticky, meeley, orange compost to load on worn plots. The site has remained untouched for over a decade and has been largely untested. Signs were placed to allow future researchers to discover it and study it.
Sixteen years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to find a site where food waste was thrown away.
Treuer initially set out to find a large placard with a plot marked – and failed.
The first sediment of Orange Peels in 1996.Photo by Dan Janzen.
“It’s a huge sign, it’s a bright yellow lettering. We could have seen it,” Treuer says. After wandering for 30 minutes without luck, he consulted Janzen. He gave more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.
When he came back a week later and made sure he was in the right place, Treuer was on the floor. Compared to the adjacent barren former meadows, the location of the food waste deposit was “just lunch and daytime.”
Sites of orange peel sediment (L) and adjacent meadows (R).Photo: Leland Werden.
“It’s hard to believe that the only difference between the two regions was a bunch of orange skins. They look like completely different ecosystems,” he explains.
The vegetation in this area was so thick he couldn’t find the sign yet.
A team of researchers from TREUER and Princeton University studied the site over the next three years.
result, Journal “Restoration Ecology”“We emphasize that the discarded fruit portions have fully supported the turnaround in the region.
According to Princeton International Public Relations School, experiment The result was a “176% increase in ground biomass or wood timber within a 3 hectares studied (7 acres).”
Ecologists measured the different qualities of the site against former meadow areas, across access roads used to dump orange peels 20 years ago. Compared to adjacent plots dominated by single-species trees, orange peel deposits were characterized by vegetation of two dozen species, and were the most thriving.
Lab technician Erik Schilling explores a newly overgrown orange peel plot.Photo by Tim Treuer.
In addition to greater biodiversity, richer soil, and a more developed canopy, researchers have discovered a 3-foot-diameter Teila (dog-sized weasel) and a giant fig tree in the plot.
“Twenty people could have climbed the tree at once, but that would have supported a weight that was not a problem,” says John Choi, co-author of the paper that conducted many of the soil analysis. “It was huge.”
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Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests – forests grown after the original inhabitants were demolished, are essential to helping slower climate change.
In a 2016 study published in Nature, researchers found that such forests were Absorbs and stores atmospheric carbon at about 11 times faster than old growth forests.
Treuer believes that better management of discarded produce, such as orange peel, could be key to helping these forests regenerate.
In many parts of the world, The rate of deforestation has increased dramaticallysinks local soils of much-needed nutrients, and together with them, deprives the ecosystem of its ability to restore itself.
Meanwhile, much of the world is overflowing with nutritious food waste. In the US, Up to half of all American produce It will be discarded. Now most of it is in landfills.
Site after supplying orange peels in 1998.Photo by Dan Janzen.
“We don’t want businesses to go out there, but we just dump waste here and there, but I think this can be really high if it’s scientifically driven and restoratives are involved in addition to businesses,” Treuer says.
He believes the next step is to investigate whether other ecosystems (dried forests, cloud forests, tropical savannas) react in the same way to similar sediments.
Two years after his initial investigation, Treuer tried to find a sign marking the site again.
Since his first scouting mission in 2013, Treuer has visited the plot more than 15 times. Choi had visited over 50. Neither of them found the original sign.
The extent of the transformation of the region really became clear in 2015 when Treuer finally found it under a grape bush with the help of senior authors of the paper, David Wilcove and Professor Princeton Rob Pringle.
Sign after cleaning the grapes.Photo by Tim Treuer.
“It’s a loud cry,” Choi emphasizes.
Two scientists, flashes of inspiration, and the modest fruit peels, waited 19 years with crossed fingers.
This article originally appeared eight years ago.
