A juice company dumped 1,000 truckloads of orange peel on dead Costa Rican pastures in 1997; 16 years later, the plot had 176% more biomass than the land beside it

A Costa Rican juice company's waste helped restore a degraded pasture. Discarded orange peels and pulp enriched the soil, fostering new growth. After a lawsuit halted the project, nature continued the restoration process undisturbed. Researchers later found significantly more biomass and diverse tree species on the treated land. This case study highlights waste as a resource for ecological restoration.