Mother Nature Network:
You’ve no doubt been walking in the park or on a trail and have seen a banana peel or orange rind lying on the ground. The outdoorsy person who tossed them no doubt thought the fruit remains would biodegrade eventually.
Sure they will. But it won’t happen overnight.
After watching hikers toss a sandwich on a trail, Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff, who hikes and works in the Grand Canyon, set up a small experiment. She put an apple core, a banana peel, orange peels, chewing gum and tissue paper in a cage of chicken wire, wide enough to allow small animals to go in and out. After six months, the orange peels had dried out, the banana peel had turned black, the chewing gum was the same and the tissue had become a blob. Nothing had been eaten or had rotted.
She buried the same items in sand and soil and six months later everything was still recognizable.
Interesting. While I don’t go for walks in the woods very often being a City Kid, I always assumed it was OK to toss organics into the woods “for the animals”. Looks like that might not be such a good idea after all.
I’ve never tossed gum, but would have assumed the apple, banana and orange would be okay. Haven’t actually done it since I was a kid, though.
It would also depend on the location. Apples fall from apple trees and decompose relatively rapidly (core and all). In extremely arid environments decomposition will be greatly retarded given lack of moisture and animals and microorganisms which would feed on them.
Vegetable matter tossed in the compost bin degrades pretty fast, and the fruit that falls from the tree, and evades cleanup is nothing but seeds by spring. Interesting experiment, though.
Well they eventually WILL degrade so it’s not like plastic etc. The issue really isn’t the odd hiker here and there, it’s a) the assumption that the stuff will degrade rapidly and b) when masses of people all dump stuff like this in a fairly narrow area near trails.
It’s more that if a lot of people do this during the summer when it’s drier it will build up before the fall/winter weather decomposes things (and during that time few or no additional stuff is dropped).
1. Maybe animals are too smart to enter the cage.
2. Grand Canyon is very dry. Can we re-run the experiment in Ontario?
My dog will take care of the Apple core and my other dog will do the same with the banana peel.
Or, we could all just dispose of trash properly and not foul up a public place with garbage.
It’s an arid environment. Of course it will take longer. Do the same thing here out east, and the orange peels and bananas would have been long gone.
Yeah, the rest of the country is as dry as the Grand Canyon.
Good God. Orange peels and banana peels degrade RAPIDLY here in less arid parts of the country.
Because she didn’t consider enough relevant variables, Marjorie’s experiment was worthless outside of any context around the single location where it was done.
Equally, the Grand Canyon is not “the woods” in a temperate area – it’s a desert.
(And, well, note that the apple core is not one of the things that survived – because it’s basically food. Peels aren’t.
Carry your trash out, even if it’s organic, except maybe things that are Actually Food, in small quantities?)
We do need to change the definition of disposing of trash properly though. I compost, and since I have been doing so, for about 5 years now, I have severely reduced the amount of actual “trash” going into my trash receptacle on a weekly basis. I really do think this sort of thing should be implemented, and mandatory, as is recycling for the most part.
Oh, so we should first consider humidity levels of the lovely outdoors we’re enjoying before tossing our junk into it. Got it.
Nature doesn’t have 7 billion people doing it while asking “What’s the big deal?”
If you can’t tell if you’re in a desert, then there is no helping you.
Composting is one of the reasons I wish I lived someplace that has a yard.
I do have a yard, I have a tumbler composter in the back yard too. but I was thinking more of the small composters you can keep on the counter, and compost pick up, much like garbage pick up.
I have friends who live in Brooklyn, near Prospect Park, they saw my counter composter, and mentioned that they were recently distributed in their building. It seems there is some thought going into it at least.
I’ll keep a look out in our snobby suburb for such a program. But our kitchen is not much for counter or floor space.
Good luck to you!