That time when an orange juice company dumped 12k tons of orange peels on barren soil in Costa Rica

Del Oro is a orange juice company based in Costa Rica and in 1997, two Princeton conservation researchers had an idea for a project:

If Del Oro agreed to donate part of its land bordering the Guanacaste Conservation Area to the national park, the company would be allowed to dump its discarded orange peel at no cost on degraded land in the park.

The juice company agreed to the deal, and some 12,000 tonnes of waste orange peel carried by a convoy of 1,000 truckloads was unceremoniously dumped on virtually lifeless soils at the site.

The deluge of nutrient-rich organic waste had an almost instantaneous effect on the fertility of the land.

Things were going fine until two years later when a rival company took them to court and the Costa Rican government sided with their rivals, forcing the project to cease. But you can’t stop nature and over a decade later, the land was transformed into lush green forestry.

I wonder what TicoFruit and the Costa Rican government had to say about that!