Clean Technica | Nexus Media | By: Marlene Cimons | September 16th, 2017:
Orange isn’t just the new black. It’s also the new green. Twenty years ago, an orange juice producer dumped thousands of tons of orange peels and pulp onto a barren section of a Costa Rican national park, which has since transformed into a lush, vine-laden woodland. The shift is a dramatic illustration of how agricultural waste can regenerate a forest and sequester vast sums of carbon — for free.
Even more remarkable, it was an accident.
“I was totally floored,” said Timothy Treuer, a Princeton University researcher and lead author of a new study published in the journal Restoration Ecologyabout the rejuvenated forest. “The area that received the orange peels was divided from the [area that did not receive the peels] by a single track dirt road, but the two areas looked like completely different ecosystems.”
On one side was a pasture “with a few scattered scraggly trees,” he said. On the other, “was an overgrown jungle, so lush it required a machete to move through. Once I was done picking my jaw up off the ground, I realized that I was looking at something truly special. It blew my mind.”
Scientists have long worried about the impact of food production on climate change. So they are devising new ways to use food waste that might otherwise end up in a landfill, where it would decompose into methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The goal is to create new products from the waste, whether they be foods, clothes, farms or — in this case — forest.
To read full article – please click here.
To read original report on Princeton University website – please click here.
