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12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

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Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#31

Post by PaulHoule »

laurencerowe wrote: post #24
arnorhs wrote: post #14

Does orange peel not produce any CO2 / methane when left like this? I'm assuming there is some negative carbon footprint before this becomes a positive? The ecological win definitely looks nice on paper, but whenever people talk about compost the carbon footprint / gas emissions is always at the front of people's minds, and I don't really see that discussed in the article. The article does say > Especially since, in…

The orange peel is going to decompose and produce CO2 either way. Methane is produced when there is not enough oxygen available while decomposing, which certainly seems a possibility if it's dumped in big piles.

Mostly.

Remember the orange trees took the CO2 out of the atmosphere to make the peels. Some of it, probably most of it, is going back into the atmosphere but some of it is going to become soil carbon which could be retained for decades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_carbon

Soil carbon is like dark matter in that there is a lot of it and it is poorly understood.

Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#32

Post by TheGRS »

MisterTea wrote: post #10

> As for how the orange peels were able to regenerate the site so effectively in just 16 years of isolation, nobody's entirely sure. We now understand that fungus plays a vital role in the soil ecosystem. And given how easily fruit and vegetables rot and get moldy, the orange peel mass sounds like the perfect layer for the fungus to thrive in. The dead earth received a live giving blanket yielding healthy soil vegeta…

They also mentioned that invasive grass species were suppressed by the orange peels which likely contributed to native plants thriving better.

Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#33

Post by PaulHoule »

underlipton wrote: post #16
nightpool wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They saw it as corruption, basically. Here's a contemporaneous article: https://apps.sas.upenn.edu/caterpillar/index.php?action=retr... > TicoFrut, which is 98% Costa Rican-owned, charges that the environmental services contract is little more than a permit for improper disposal of its foreign-owned competitor's waste. TicoFrut President Carlos Odio says Del Oro should be compelled to build a proper waste-disposal pl…

In a way, they might have been right. Who knows whether or not a continuation of the active experiment would have pushed it over a tipping point where the positive effects were nullified. Maybe part of the "magic" is that they literally left it there to rot.

it could have been corruption and something that turned out well in the end

Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#34

Post by PaulHoule »

bell-cot wrote: post #6

This being HN - might there be any Costa Rican lawyers in the house? It would be extremely interesting to hear about the legal merits of the rival company's lawsuit, and the politics of the Supreme Court.

It's the kind of question that I'd rather see answered by an ecologist than a judge!

Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#35

Post by rustystump »

sfink wrote: post #28
arnorhs wrote: post #14

Does orange peel not produce any CO2 / methane when left like this? I'm assuming there is some negative carbon footprint before this becomes a positive? The ecological win definitely looks nice on paper, but whenever people talk about compost the carbon footprint / gas emissions is always at the front of people's minds, and I don't really see that discussed in the article. The article does say > Especially since, in…

CO2 is going to be neutral for the peels. You're just transporting it from where the oranges grew to where they were dumped. The CO2 benefit is purely from the trees and other biomass that grow where they wouldn't be growing before. As for methane, that's a good question. Orange peels are better than most things because the limonene inhibits methane producing bacteria. But you'd still get quite a bit in the deeper pi…

I may be wrong but isnt most of the tree carbon capture over stated as in the overwhelming majority comes from algae in the oceans?

While forests are great they are not the best focus iirc compared to the oceans.

Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#36

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ethagnawl wrote: post #12

It's recently occurred to me how "valuable" today's trash is likely to be considered in the future. I'll focus on organics here but I think the plastics will be equally valuable, too. I have no idea what % of American households compost or live in places which offer municipal compost pickup but I imagine it's in the single digits. As evidenced by this article, compost is/can be an incredibly powerful agent of change:…

For anthropologists and archaeologists, trash/sewage is gold.

Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#37

Post by IncreasePosts »

ethagnawl wrote: post #12

It's recently occurred to me how "valuable" today's trash is likely to be considered in the future. I'll focus on organics here but I think the plastics will be equally valuable, too. I have no idea what % of American households compost or live in places which offer municipal compost pickup but I imagine it's in the single digits. As evidenced by this article, compost is/can be an incredibly powerful agent of change:…

These machines are currently too expensive for widespread adoption, but I love the electric composter I bought that I keep in my garage.

There's no grossness or work involved. You just dump stuff in it and it cooks it down to something dirt-like(nearly but not quite compost ready) in less than a day.

I have municipal compost, but it's only picked up every 2 weeks, so that meant I needed to keep food scraps around for two weeks before pick up, so they either would get super gross and smelly, or I had to use my chest freezer to store them and make that gross and smelly and dedicated to just compost.

Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#38

Post by ambicapter »

jandrese wrote: post #17
nightpool wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They saw it as corruption, basically. Here's a contemporaneous article: https://apps.sas.upenn.edu/caterpillar/index.php?action=retr... > TicoFrut, which is 98% Costa Rican-owned, charges that the environmental services contract is little more than a permit for improper disposal of its foreign-owned competitor's waste. TicoFrut President Carlos Odio says Del Oro should be compelled to build a proper waste-disposal pl…

I mean it makes sense if you were just forced to implement an expensive waste management system and your competitor gets to just dump the stuff on the ground in a National Park. I would complain too.

It doesn't make sense if you were forced to implement waste management because you did it poorly to start with and your competitor found a smart way to do it for cheap.

Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#39

Post by TheGRS »

MisterTea wrote: post #20
nightpool wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They saw it as corruption, basically. Here's a contemporaneous article: https://apps.sas.upenn.edu/caterpillar/index.php?action=retr... > TicoFrut, which is 98% Costa Rican-owned, charges that the environmental services contract is little more than a permit for improper disposal of its foreign-owned competitor's waste. TicoFrut President Carlos Odio says Del Oro should be compelled to build a proper waste-disposal pl…

> TicoFrut President Carlos Odio says Del Oro should be compelled to build a proper waste-disposal plant just as his company was forced to do in the mid-1990s amid allegations that orange waste from its juicing plant was polluting a nearby river. This is the work of a petty man child. This is how it reads to me: "I got caught being a lazy irresponsible cheap-skate who was illegally dumping and had to pay. Meanwhile,…

I'm also disappointed by the decision, but I get the argument made from the business perspective. I'm required to dispose my waste properly and its reflected in my prices, my competitor is not doing these practices and they should be compelled to follow the same regulations. I'm just disappointed that their court sided with the business since a better resolution would've been "your company can do this too if you just do the legwork".

Re: 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)

#40

Post by acomjean »

ethagnawl wrote: post #12

It's recently occurred to me how "valuable" today's trash is likely to be considered in the future. I'll focus on organics here but I think the plastics will be equally valuable, too. I have no idea what % of American households compost or live in places which offer municipal compost pickup but I imagine it's in the single digits. As evidenced by this article, compost is/can be an incredibly powerful agent of change:…

I worked for a time designing and building landfills. Nothing really rots in them typically as it’s really dry and don’t have good access to oxygen. Modern landfills are like giant plastic bags. This is to protect ground water.

Decomposition as noted releases methane. Some landfills gather it in pipes and “flare” it )burn. They have to vent the gas as a full landfill is covered by a plastic cap to prevent water infiltration.

We dug up trash from the 70s to extend the landfill out. It was in remarkably good shape.

https://planetliner.com/landfill-cap/

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