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