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.
This is the greatest thing I’ve read in a long time and I want this experiment replicated everywhere as soon as possible.
My town would be a good start.
the funniest part is that everyone is so surprised.
“composting kitchen waste makes plants grow. who knew???”
well… everyone?
It’s not so much that they’re SURPRISED about it. That was actually the original plan.
This juice company agreed to donate a few acres of its own land to a bordering national park, and compost orange peels there to help restore the land. They were subsequently sued by a rival juice company for having “defiled a national park.” The law sided with the rival company, and the project was discontinued early.
This isn’t so much a “Wow SO SURPRISE!” as a “FUCKIN’ TOLD YOU SO!”
Plus also, sixteen years ago, we might’ve known the answer to the question “What happens when you compost kitchen waste?” but we DIDN’T know the answer to “What happens when you dump 12,000 tons of orange peel on 7 acres of ecologically depleted wasteland?”
And for the first six months, the answer was, “7 acres of nasty-smelling, fly breeding ex-fruit sludge, and a lawsuit from a rival juice company,” but 16 years LATER we can say, “A 176 percent increase in above-ground biomass, and a study site so transformed we couldn’t tell we had the right place until we dug the sign out of undergrowth consisting mainly of native shrubs and grasses, SUCK IT, TICO FRUIT!!!!”
The Night HE Came Home; John Carpenter’s “Halloween” slashed its way into theaters on this day in 1978! The seminal slasher story popularized the tropes we now associate with the genre and opened the crypt door for a whole generation of masked madmen movies. John Carpenter’s direction and score made him a Ho-rror legend, and Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode set the standard for all future final girls. Still scary after all these years, “Halloween” proves that you can’t kill the Boogeyman.
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