“I don’t know what you young people are complaining about! Why, back in my day, sonny, I shoveled shit from under the seats in a movie theater making burgers at the McDonald’s for three dollars an hour and I went to college and bought a house! You just need to work hard and learn how to budget!”
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 Atlantic Forest biome in Paraguay has been under assault from multiple angles, including intensive soybean agriculture and illegal logging. To combat this, Guyra Paraguay has teamed up with local indigenous communities to purchase land around the edge of the forest. This creates a “buffer zone” to protect the ecosystem from further encroachment.
Within the buffer zone, local people grow yerba mate (a traditional Paraguan tea) in the shade of the forest. This unique agroforestry system provides a source of income for people and habitat for local wildlife.
As of right now, around 7,000 hectares of forest have been protected under this system, and the number will only go up. A healthier forest means healthier soil and water, and more natural carbon sequestration.
“With yerba mate popping up as a key ingredient in natural energy drinks
in Europe and North America, demand is growing fast, and the next step
is marketing forest-friendly yerba mate for commercial success. This
year’s yield was particularly successful, with 15 families harvesting
14,000 kilograms of yerba mate. For the first time, the product was
harvested completely under organic and fair trade standards, opening up
great exciting opportunities to market the crop as a premium product.”
