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Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by 0cf8612b2e1e on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @12:00AM (#41633021)
What is the normal outcome of these orange peels? Fed to livestock? Mulch? Or just added to landfill?

The results were impressive, but I imagine there were months of rotting orange peels. Which is probably not ideal neighbors, but fine in otherwise barren, uninhabited land.

Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by stevage on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @01:08AM (#41633251)
You don't need to imagine:

>"Kind of passing through this gross stage in between of kind of sludgy stuff filled with fly larvae."

Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by datavirtue on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @06:31AM (#41635092)
Yeah, the land was moving for a while.
Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by rolfea on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @10:18AM (#41636715)
I wonder about the practicality of complementing that stage of the decomposition with a free-range poultry operation. Bringing in chickens, the birds eat the larvae, and generate more fertilizer along the way.
Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by stevage on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @11:30PM (#41643446)
Reminds me of some permaculture setups I've seen that do something exactly like that. There's a raised bin full of food scraps, it gets populated with fly larvae, which the chickens eat.

There are also startups that take in organic waste and use it to breed soldier fly larvae, which they then harvest and sell as protein for animal food etc.

Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by Mistletoe on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @01:19AM (#41633297)
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1994/jun/23/straight-bil...

>As for what happens to all the rinds from that mountain of oranges Tropicana processes, the nutrition in them (and apparently there is a lot) eventually comes back to us in the form of hamburgers. Tropicana and other processors dry the rinds, chop them up, and sell them for cattle feed.

Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by netsharc on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @03:34AM (#41634053)
> 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.

I guess they weren't doing this cattle feed deal back then, since evidently it was more economical for them to find a free dumping ground? Maybe they produce too much of it: 12000 tonnes, that's the cargo capacity of ninety 747s...

Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by ThrowawayTestr on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @09:21AM (#41636181)
The dumping was close to the factory so they saved money in shipping costs right there.
Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by netsharc on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @02:47PM (#41639684)
I guess they weren't selling the rinds to cattle feed producers (or maybe only a low percentage of it, and have to figure out how to get rid of the rest). If the rinds were being sold, they'd be sold at a profit or at least try to be cost-neutral.
Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by ineedaj0b on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @04:15AM (#41634322)
i grew up near an orange producer and they burned them. god it stunk. nice to see they found a better way to use the peels
Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by Suppafly on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @01:12PM (#41638713)
I'm really surprised there aren't a bunch of secondary by-products created from the peels. Obviously there is always going to be some waste, but you'd think they'd extract all the oils and stuff first.
Re:Dumped orange peel transformed a barren pasture (2017) by wnissen on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @02:04PM (#41639273)
I thought it was interesting that the climate caused them to decompose, when orange peel is one of the most common forms of garbage I see on higher elevation (6000 ft. / 2000 m) trails. It's dry enough that the peel effectively never rots.

Just goes to show that it's all about the system.

https://thetrek.co/pacific-crest-trail/how-much-trash-gets-l...