Company Dumps Thousands of Tons of Orange Peels onto Land. 16 Years Later, It Turns into Beautiful Green Forest

Unfortunately, the world we live in today has countries all around the world burning down rainforests to fuel capitalist industries while leaving many acres of land deforested.

One example of these barren lands was Costa Rica.

Fortunately, there are some people out there who are trying to save these ecosystems – ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs.

In the 1990s, the two of them approached orange juice manufacturer Del Oro and exchanged a deal for them to donate a part of their land in exchange for the ecologists granting permission for them to deposit agricultural waste on the degraded land for free.

Del Oro agreed and dumped 1,000 truckloads of orange pulp and peels on that land.
 

Over the years, Del Oro offloaded over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, orange compost onto the worn-out plot until rival company TicoFruit sued, saying Del Oro had defiled the park.

TicoFruit won the lawsuit and the land went overlooked for over a decade.

A sign was placed on the site for researchers to locate and study it if they wanted to.

16 years later, environmental researches decided to evaluate the site and discovered a lush forest that had a 176 percent increase in aboveground biomass.

The researchers concluded that regenerating forests with agricultural waste could help us reduce the carbon footprint we create.

With so many food companies out there that need a way to eliminate their food waste, this is the perfect opportunity for recycling at its best.

 
Thanks to these two humble ecologists, they may have discovered something that could impact the future of our planet for the better.