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A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. Here's what it looks like now.

12,000 tons of food waste and 21 years later, this forest looks totally different.

In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached an orange juice company in Costa Rica with an off-the-wall idea. In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country's northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.

One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot.

The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.

The first deposit of orange peels in 1996.

Photo by Dan Janzen.

"It's a huge sign, bright yellow lettering. We should have been able to see it," Treuer says. After wandering around for half an hour with no luck, he consulted Janzen, who gave him more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.

When he returned a week later and confirmed he was in the right place, Treuer was floored. Compared to the adjacent barren former pastureland, the site of the food waste deposit was "like night and day."

The site of the orange peel deposit (L) and adjacent pastureland (R).

Photo by Leland Werden.

"It was just hard to believe that the only difference between the two areas was a bunch of orange peels. They look like completely different ecosystems," he explains.

The area was so thick with vegetation he still could not find the sign.

Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site over the course of the following three years.

The results, published in the journal "Restoration Ecology," highlight just how completely the discarded fruit parts assisted the area's turnaround.

The ecologists measured various qualities of the site against an area of former pastureland immediately across the access road used to dump the orange peels two decades prior. Compared to the adjacent plot, which was dominated by a single species of tree, the site of the orange peel deposit featured two dozen species of vegetation, most thriving.

Lab technician Erik Schilling explores the newly overgrown orange peel plot.

Photo by Tim Treuer.

In addition to greater biodiversity, richer soil, and a better-developed canopy, researchers discovered a tayra (a dog-sized weasel) and a giant fig tree three feet in diameter, on the plot.

"You could have had 20 people climbing in that tree at once and it would have supported the weight no problem," says Jon Choi, co-author of the paper, who conducted much of the soil analysis. "That thing was massive."

Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests — those that grow after the original inhabitants are torn down — are essential to helping slow climate change.

In a 2016 study published in Nature, researchers found that such forests absorb and store atmospheric carbon at roughly 11 times the rate of old-growth forests.

Treuer believes better management of discarded produce — like orange peels — could be key to helping these forests regrow.

In many parts of the world, rates of deforestation are increasing dramatically, sapping local soil of much-needed nutrients and, with them, the ability of ecosystems to restore themselves.

Meanwhile, much of the world is awash in nutrient-rich food waste. In the United States, up to half of all produce in the United States is discarded. Most currently ends up in landfills.

The site after a deposit of orange peels in 1998.

Photo by Dan Janzen.

"We don't want companies to go out there will-nilly just dumping their waste all over the place, but if it's scientifically driven and restorationists are involved in addition to companies, this is something I think has really high potential," Treuer says.

The next step, he believes, is to examine whether other ecosystems — dry forests, cloud forests, tropical savannas — react the same way to similar deposits.

Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned to once again try to locate the sign marking the site.

Since his first scouting mission in 2013, Treuer had visited the plot more than 15 times. Choi had visited more than 50. Neither had spotted the original sign.

In 2015, when Treuer, with the help of the paper's senior author, David Wilcove, and Princeton Professor Rob Pringle, finally found it under a thicket of vines, the scope of the area's transformation became truly clear.

The sign after clearing away the vines.

Photo by Tim Treuer.

"It's a big honking sign," Choi emphasizes.

19 years of waiting with crossed fingers had buried it, thanks to two scientists, a flash of inspiration, and the rind of an unassuming fruit.


This article originally appeared seven years ago.

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Heroes

Human waste as sustainable energy? These high schoolers made it happen.

True
Green Mountain Energy

Leroy Mwasaru was a high school student at Kenya's prestigious Maseno School when a dorm room renovation created an unfortunate situation.

The school's outdoor latrines overflowed into the local water supply.

Understandably, this made some people quite upset. But Mwasaru saw this as an opportunity to turn something revolting into a revolution.

[rebelmouse-image 19469680 dam="1" original_size="500x274" caption="All GIFs from Makeshift/YouTube." expand=1]All GIFs from Makeshift/YouTube.

If he could redirect the overflowing human waste, it could give them cleaner water and help the school save money on fire and electricity.

See, at that same time, his school was spending a lot of money on firewood, which, like many Kenyan buildings, it used to fuel its kitchens, heat, and lights. It can be labor intensive to gather all that wood — and it's even more expensive to buy it.  Plus, all the soot and ash it creates is not good for the staff to consume on such a regular and large-scale basis.

[rebelmouse-image 19469681 dam="1" original_size="1200x624" caption="Mwasaru and his friends speak with school staff about the wood-burning furnace. Image from MakeShift/YouTube." expand=1]Mwasaru and his friends speak with school staff about the wood-burning furnace. Image from MakeShift/YouTube.

So Mwasaru thought — why not use a biogas digester instead?

In his sophomore year biology class, he had learned how these digesters can harvest natural bacterial byproducts, such as human waste and turn it into natural gas energy through a process called anaerobic digestion.

"I initially researched renewable energy and biogas [digesters] just to satisfy my intellectual curiosity," Mwasaru explains over email. "After a while, it became so much more than biology — there was chemistry too. It got to solving problems my local community faced, such as lack of access to affordable renewable energy."

[rebelmouse-image 19469682 dam="1" original_size="1189x574" caption="Students on the Maseno School campus. Image from MakeShift/YouTube." expand=1]Students on the Maseno School campus. Image from MakeShift/YouTube.

Mwasaru recruited a group of friends, and over the next year, they built a working prototype biogas digester for the school.

His initial proposal was met with some level of resistance from the community. "I want to burn our poop to fuel the kitchen" isn't exactly the kind of thing anyone wants to hear from a high school student.

"That's what pushed me to make sure it came to pass, and made sure it benefited them. Sometimes it's the bad energy you get that pushes you to do stuff," Mwasaru says.

Their earliest tests began by collecting raw "fuel" in the form of cow dung, food waste, fresh cut grass, and eventually, water.

These components were then mixed together into a paste...

... that they poured into a plastic vessel — the digester itself.

The natural bacteria contained in all these ingredients was more than enough to spark the anaerobic process as it broke down the organic waste materials.

Over time, the dense physical waste drops down to the bottom of the container, separating from the bacteria's combustible gas byproduct, which can then be collected and used for energy.

Lighting a burner with harvested biogas.

Granted, there were a few hiccups along the way. "I have to credit the failures we have had," Mwasaru says. "Our very first bio-digester prototype had too much gas and exploded, so we had to re-learn and re-invent the model until it was stable."

After a little trial and error, Mwasaru and friends completed their first working prototype — and it was good enough to earn them a coveted spot at the Innovate Kenya startup camp.

See this video here of how his small-scale prototype worked here:

It demonstrated the basic way that the anaerobic process could be contained within a single plastic vessel with pipes to move the gas along, while directing all the other organic waste into the ground. It wasn't enough to power the entire school on its own, but it was a start.

Then, at the startup camp, the teens had the opportunity to work alongside student engineers from MIT to hone and refine their project.

[rebelmouse-image 19469688 dam="1" original_size="1212x683" caption="Mwasaru, left, with his friends Amos Dede and Charles, who also worked on the biogas project. Image from MakeShift/YouTube." expand=1]Mwasaru, left, with his friends Amos Dede and Charles, who also worked on the biogas project. Image from MakeShift/YouTube.

In fact, the product that this high schooler devised was so impressive that it earned them funding from Global Minimum — a charitable organization that encourages young innovators and leaders in Africa — to build a second,  improved prototype.

"Leroy seeks to understand everything he doesn't know by asking probing questions, taking notes and experimenting to learn," said David Moinina Sengeh, an MIT Researcher who also serves as Global Minimum's board president, in an interview with CNN. "His curiosity to explore and learn from doing within a motivation to bring broader social change is something that we hope to see in all our youth and frankly everyone."

Mwasaru speaking at the One Young World summit in Arizona. Photo provided by Leroy Mwasaru.

As work began on the next, larger prototype, Mwasaru had the opportunity to travel to America to speak at prestigious conferences, such as Techonomy and One Young World.

He also returned home to the small village where his father still lives and helped to install a biogas digester there too, using the dung from his father's six cows. It generates enough gas for him to share with the other 30 houses in the village. Plus, it made things easier for the women in the village — another cause that Mwasaru is passionate about — who were sometimes spending up to 24 hours a week collecting firewood.

"When I deployed the Biogas pilot in my rural home, I mainly envisioned it as a way of leveraging sustainable renewable energy to make the world a better place through my community," Mwasaru says. "Now I believe through our activities that other sectors [such as women empowerment] could benefit immensely from the approach."

[rebelmouse-image 19469690 dam="1" original_size="1200x624" caption="The dining hall at Maseno School. Image from MakeShift/YouTube." expand=1]The dining hall at Maseno School. Image from MakeShift/YouTube.

The biogas digester project has since grown into a full-fledged startup/social enterprise called Greenpact — with Mwasaru serving as its CEO.

Since graduating from Maseno School, Mwasaru has taken a gap year to focus on the company's mission to address the lack of affordable renewable energy and proper sanitation that affects some 9 million Kenyan households.

He hopes to steer the company into an impactful organization that offers a wide range of products and services, including biogas digesters. He does have plans to go to college — but for now, Greenpact is his priority.

"I didn't see myself focusing on renewable energy but after doing some work in the field I figured out that I am actually more into renewable energy than I had imagined," Mwasaru says.

Now he's determined to show the world how to turn energy into opportunity and vice versa. The only way to do that is to stop seeing things as waste and start seeing them as resources instead.

Heroes

An artist saw hundreds of plastic bags stuck on a barbed wire fence. It gave him an idea.

Corban Lundborg has tagged old rail yards in Minneapolis, drawn tattoos in South Korea, and traveled to over 50 countries taking photos for the U.S. military.

In all of Lundborg's adventures, there's been one constant: plastic litter.

The reality hit the artist hard during a stint in Cape Town, South Africa, where he shared a home with his girlfriend, two roommates, and a small mini-fridge. On frequent trips to the supermarket, he noticed clerks would often bag each item individually, resulting in an explosion of plastic.

Much of it wound up on the sidewalks and streets.

"The wind picks it up and blows the plastic all into the barbed wire fences," he recalls. "And then it just blows in the wind and you have these like plastic barbed wire flags just waving everywhere you look around the city."

Back home in Los Angeles, he set about incorporating that stark, disquieting image into his art.

Originally conceived as a physical installation, he ultimately settled on a painting project. With a series of colorful brushstrokes, the pieces depict wild animals, their faces melding into the plastic as it consumes them.

All images by Corban Lundborg.

The images are playful, but the implications are serious.

"Part of me wonders why so many people are so against trying to better our environment," Lundborg says. "This is our home. This is where we live. This is where we raise our children. This is where we work, live. This is the air we breathe. Why would you be against trying to do our best to take care of that?"

He hopes his art helps call attention to the proliferation of plastic waste, much of which, ultimately, winds up in our oceans.

"Single-use" packaging, like shopping bags, is the largest category of such trash found in or around bodies of water, according to an April 27, 2017 Huffington Post report.

Lundborg believes everyone has the capacity to contribute something to the clean-up effort — particularly governments and businesses.

He's been encouraged by the proliferation of plastic bag bans, though he'd like to see more investing in alternatives to plastic.

For individuals, it may be as simple as bringing reusable bags to the supermarket, as he and his girlfriend started doing in Cape Town.  

"If we could just start small, I think we could see progress," he says.

You can check out more of Lundborg's art and photography here.

Heroes

9 reasons you shouldn't throw away clothes, and 4 things you can do instead.

Textile waste is a real problem that so often goes overlooked.

True
Savers + Value Village

It's springtime! The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, and everyone's ready to clean out their closets.

There's something about warmer weather — it seems to make us want to do a complete makeover on our wardrobes and get rid of clutter around the house.

When it comes to unwanted items, sometimes it just feels good to purge and start fresh. No doubt there have been times when you've thrown things in the trash instead of taking them to a donation center. Perhaps you didn't have the time to drop it off, or you thought it was too far gone to be donated.

You're not alone. According to the 2017 State of Reuse Report, North Americans throw away roughly 81 pounds of textiles (clothing, towels, bedding, etc.) a year per person. Think of it this way: That's more than 26 billion pounds (!) heading into landfills each year across the U.S. and Canada alone.

Image via iStock.

Still not convinced? Here are nine more reasons to not throw away clothing.

1. Every time you toss a piece of clothing in the trash, you're costing your city or town money.

According to the EPA, it costs an average of $45 per ton to dispose of waste in a landfill. A fashion-focused city like New York City pays $20.6 million per year just to dispose of textile waste. That's a whole other level of wastefulness.

2. Your used clothes may be more usable than you think.

According to Savers' most recent study, 62% of people who admit to throwing away textiles do so because they didn't think a donation center would take them. This is an unfortunate misconception.

3. 95% of used textiles can be recycled or repurposed.

Take a minute to pick your jaw up off the floor. Yup, those are the stats from The Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMART). Since people tend to think no one can use clothes with holes, used undergarments, or that shirt that got burned in a freak cooking accident, they don’t bother trying to recycle them. But just because it may not be wearable doesn't mean it won't serve a purpose. These items can have a second life as dishrags or even insulation.

4. Taking clothes to donation centers helps your local community.

Image via iStock.

In terms of giving back, the Savers survey found that 78% of people would prefer their charitable giving to benefit a local cause rather than a national cause, and 76% consider donating clothing and home goods "charitable giving." The textiles you bring to your local donation center will directly benefit members of your community.

5. The apparel industry is the second-largest industrial polluter in the world.

According to Forbes, the production of clothes (just clothes, not all textiles) is responsible for 10% of all carbon emissions on the planet. And since we know production won't stop, we should do what we can to offset these stats by reusing, recycling, and buying fewer clothes.

6. Clothes release toxic gas when they decompose in landfills.

As clothing joins the rest of the garbage in landfills, it breaks down and releases toxic greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the environment. In fact, landfills are the third-largest source of atmospheric methane on the planet.

7. It takes so much water to make a pair of jeans.

Up to 1,800 gallons, to be exact. That's more water than you can or will drink in five years. Just some food (or water) for thought.

8. It takes more energy to make a new pair of jeans than leaving the lights in your house on all night.

Sorry, clothes hounds, but this is reason enough to patch those tried and true jeans in your closet.

9. Fast fashion (garments typically worn less than five times, then thrown away) is a major contributor to clothing waste.

You know those cheaply made clothes that don't really hold up well in the wash, so you toss them after about a month or two? They produce 400% more carbon emissions per item per year than that one great outfit-making piece of clothing you wear 50 times and keep for a year or more.

Ready to do your part to support a nonprofit or charitable organization in your community while saving the planet? Here are a few ways you can make a difference by reducing textile waste.

1. DON'T throw away your clothes (whether they are good quality, used, or worn out). DO bring them to your local donation center.

Savers found that 96% of the people they polled are willing to drive up to 30 minutes to donate their unwanted clothing. So not only is it good to do, it's easy.

2. Have a clothing swap party!

Image by J R/Flickr.

Hate the idea of sorting through your clothes and lugging them somewhere without an immediate payoff? What if you could exchange them for new (to you) clothes and party down with your friends at the same time? That’s the sheer delight of a clothing swap party: You get to discard the clothes you no longer want and return home with ones you like, all at no cost to you.

3. Shop thrift.

Thrifting is on the rise, and millennials (as usual) are leading the charge. Most cities also have consignment shops where you can sell lightly used clothes or exchange them for other lightly used clothes (which, let’s face it, always seem cooler than our own). That's like recycling squared!

4. Find ways to reuse and repurpose your own clothes.

30% of the clothes you donate will be repurposed into a commercial or industrial wiping cloth. If you haveworn, stained, or torn clothing and textiles, why not just make your own rags for cleaning or arts and crafts?

Curtailing your clothing waste and reducing your carbon footprint can be an adjustment, but all it takes is a little bit of effort to change how you see what's in your closet.

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