Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren boglebam here with another classic episode from Our earthWhile
Speaker 1: host Christian Sager. This one has to do with some
Speaker 1: awesome environmental research that almost never came to light. I'll
Speaker 1: let Christian explain, Hey brain Stuff, it's Christian Sager. Imagine
Speaker 1: if some of Earth's most barren waste lands could be
Speaker 1: transformed into dense, productive forests by the most unlikely of helpers,
Speaker 1: discarded fruit peels. It sounds like wishful thinking, but that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. In the nineteen nineties. During a promising
Speaker 1: ecological experiment, orange juice manufacturer del Oro plunked twelve thousand
Speaker 1: metric tons It's around thirteen thousand, two hundred eight tons
Speaker 1: of orange peels on top of bleak coasta Rican pasture land,
Speaker 1: eventually transforming it into a lush, fertile forest. But it's
Speaker 1: a success story that almost wasn't told. Del Oro donated
Speaker 1: a seven acre or three hacked or plot on the
Speaker 1: edge of the Wanna Caste Conservation area after being approached
Speaker 1: by University of Pennsylvania researchers Daniel Jansen and Winnie hal
Speaker 1: Walks who wondered how the companies discarded orange peels could
Speaker 1: benefit the soil in The company deposited one thousand truckloads
Speaker 1: of orange skins onto the degraded land as part of
Speaker 1: the agreement, but rival orange squeezer Tico Fruit, sued del
Speaker 1: Oro a year into the contract, claiming the company was
Speaker 1: defiling a national park. Costa Rica's Supreme Court agreed, and
Speaker 1: after only two years, the experiment came to a halt.
Speaker 1: That could have been the end of the story were
Speaker 1: it not for Timothy Truer, a curious ecologist at Princeton University.
Speaker 1: In Team, Truer and a team of researchers traveled to
Speaker 1: Costa Rica for unrelated research and decided to look up
Speaker 1: the orange peel plot. The site's sign was so covered
Speaker 1: with vines and the land so densely filled with trees
Speaker 1: that it took the team years and dozens of site
Speaker 1: visits to discover it. The team sampled and studied the
Speaker 1: soil at the site and compared it to samples that
Speaker 1: were taken in the year two thousand. It also noted
Speaker 1: tree diameter and species from the orange peel site and
Speaker 1: that of a nearby pasture that wasn't treated with peels.
Speaker 1: The researchers found that the treated area had richer soil,
Speaker 1: more tree biomass, and a broader variety of tree species,
Speaker 1: including a fig tree with a circumference equivalent to three armspans.
Speaker 1: The precise reasons for this one hundred and seventies six
Speaker 1: percent increase and above ground biomass are still being investigated,
Speaker 1: but the researchers contend dumping massive amounts of nutrient rich
Speaker 1: organic waste had a nearly immediate effect on the land's fertility,
Speaker 1: changing its lifeless soil into a thick, rich, loamy mixture.
Speaker 1: The researchers proposed it's also probable that the orange peels
Speaker 1: suppressed growth of an invasive grass that was keeping the
Speaker 1: forest from flourishing. Not only is the rediscovery of the
Speaker 1: experiment a boon for barren landscapes and agricultural waste, but
Speaker 1: it also could have a major impact on Earth if
Speaker 1: more companies institute similar environmentally friendly solutions to waste, the
Speaker 1: resulting richly vegetated land could help isolate harmful carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: in the air and improve Earth's polluted atmosphere. So consider
Speaker 1: this an estimated fifty of all fresh produce in the
Speaker 1: United States, or roughly sixty six million tons or sixty
Speaker 1: million metric tons of produce is thrown away annually, making
Speaker 1: it the single largest ingredient in American land thrills. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Loyal Dove and produced by Dylan
Speaker 1: Fagan and Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots
Speaker 1: of other green topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
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