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!!!!”
Queercare provides
assistance for immunocompromised, astmatic or otherwise at additional
risk from COVID-19. You can also access useful resources and advice via
their page. Queercare has volunteers nationally and is working on organising folk into more local groups and providing advice.A sign-up form is available here.
the woman who set up the dundee mutual aid for covid 19 group has
designed this wee letter you could edit to suit your own location and
put up in your block
On this day, 14 March 2018, Marielle Franco, bisexual Afro-Brazilian socialist and feminist was assassinated in Rio de Janeiro.
Raised in a favela in the city, she began work aged 11, and later raised a daughter as a single mother working for the minimum wage, before being elected to the city council in 2016. The day before her murder she had spoken out against extrajudicial killings by police and paramilitaries.
The bullets which killed her had been bought by the federal police. The Minister of Public Security claimed that the bullets were stolen from a post office, but this lie was retracted when the post office publicly stated it was untrue.
So far four suspects have been arrested for the murder, all with ties to state security forces, and two of them with links to the family of recently elected right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro. One suspect, a former police officer, was killed in a shootout after police attempted to arrest him. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1374193906099089/?type=3
Metropolitan Opera to Offer Up Free ‘Nightly Met Opera Streams’
