Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: it's Christian Seger. Imagine if some of Earth's most barren
Speaker 1: waste lands could be transformed into dense, productive forests by
Speaker 1: the most unlikely of helpers, discarded fruit peels. It sounds
Speaker 1: like wishful thinking, but that's exactly what happened. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. During a promising ecological experiment, orange juice manufacturer
Speaker 1: del Oro plunked twelve thousand metric tons it's around thirteen thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred twenty eight tons of orange peels on top
Speaker 1: of bleak Costa Rican pasture land, eventually transforming it into
Speaker 1: a lush, fertile forest. But it's a success story that
Speaker 1: almost wasn't told. Del Oro donated a seven acre or
Speaker 1: three hacked or plot on the edge of the Wanna
Speaker 1: Caste conservation area after being approached by University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: researchers Daniel Jansen and Winnie Hall Walks, who wondered how
Speaker 1: the companies discarded orange peels could benefit the soil. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, the company deposited one thousand truckloads of
Speaker 1: orange skins onto the degraded land as part of the agreement,
Speaker 1: but rival orange squeezer Tico Fruit, sued del Oro a
Speaker 1: year into the contract, claiming the company was defiling a
Speaker 1: national park. Costa Rica's Supreme Court agreed, and after only
Speaker 1: two years, the experiment came to a halt. That could
Speaker 1: have been the end of the story were it not
Speaker 1: for Timothy Truer, a curious ecologist at Princeton University in
Speaker 1: Truer and a team of researchers traveled to Costa Rica
Speaker 1: for unrelated research and decided to look up the orange
Speaker 1: peel plot. The site's sign was so covered with vines
Speaker 1: and the land so densely filled with trees that it
Speaker 1: took the team years and dozens of site visits to
Speaker 1: discover it. The team sampled and studied the soil at
Speaker 1: the site and compared it to samples that were taken
Speaker 1: in the year two thousand. It also noted tree diameter
Speaker 1: and species from the orange peel site and that of
Speaker 1: a nearby pasture that wasn't treated with peels. The researchers
Speaker 1: found that the treated area had richer soil, more tree biomass,
Speaker 1: and a broader variety of tree species, including a fig
Speaker 1: tree with a circumference equivalent to three armspans. The precise
Speaker 1: reasons for this one hundred and seventies six percent increase
Speaker 1: and above ground biomass are still being investigated, but the
Speaker 1: researchers contend dumping massive amounts of nutrient rich organic waste
Speaker 1: had a nearly immediate effect on the land's fertility, changing
Speaker 1: its lifeless soil into a thick, rich, loamy mixture. The
Speaker 1: researchers proposed it's also probable that the orange peels suppressed
Speaker 1: growth of an invasive grass that was keeping the forest
Speaker 1: from flourishing. Not only is the rediscovery of the experiment
Speaker 1: a boon for barren landscapes and agricultural waste, but it
Speaker 1: also could have a major impact on Earth. If more
Speaker 1: companies institute similar environmentally friendly solutions to waste, the resulting
Speaker 1: richly vegetated land could help isolate harmful carbon dioxide in
Speaker 1: the air and improve Earth's polluted atmosphere. So consider this
Speaker 1: an estimated of all fresh produce in the United States,
Speaker 1: or roughly sixty six million tons or sixty million metric
Speaker 1: tons of produce is thrown away annually, making it the
Speaker 1: single largest ingredient in American landfills. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Laurie Ill. The produced by Dylan Fagan, and for
Speaker 1: more on this and other topics, please visit us at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com.