I was shocked to find out that orange peels and apple cores cannot be thrown into the mountains!

Not long ago, my colleagues from Guokr went to the mountains to pick up garbage. We picked up a lot of water bottles, packaging bags, self-heating hot pots, and a lot of fruit peels and paper scraps.

"Leave nothing behind except your footprints" is a saying that has been deeply rooted in people's minds. However, many people subconsciously think that water bottle wrappers are considered garbage, but fruit peels and paper scraps are not . Is that true?

Click on the video to see what we picked up

There are two common myths here:

1) Fruit peels and cores belong to nature and can be degraded in the wild, so they can be thrown away at will;

2) I think the fruit peels and cores have no impact on nature and can even provide fertilizer for plants.

Counterintuitively, fruit peels and cores left by tourists are the most common and annoying garbage outdoors. Orange peels, apple cores, banana peels, and leftover corn cobs often appear in piles on both sides of mountain roads. In the wild, the natural degradation rate of fruit peels and cores is much lower than the rate of human littering, and they are likely to harm wildlife.

Degradable? Not necessarily!

As a qualified outdoorsman, you must abide by the " Leave No Trace " principle in the wild. Simply put, it means passing through the wild without leaving any traces, as if you had not been there.

Leave No Trace Principles｜ecobus

But when "preaching" Leave No Trace to new outdoor enthusiasts, it always takes a lot of effort to explain that fruit peels and cores are also garbage and should all be packed up and taken away.

In the wild, the fruit peels we throw away will not disappear quickly. In the ecosystem, the decomposition of organic matter is affected by many factors, including altitude, temperature, humidity, and the type of decomposers. In fragile ecological environments such as mountains, deserts, and caves, because there are fewer decomposers, the decomposition of organic matter will be particularly slow. The fruit cores we throw away may remain in the wild for decades or even hundreds of years .

Even in the environment around the city, fruit cores and peels are not easy to decompose.

This is how long it takes for domestic waste to degrade in the wild👇

Paper bags – one month

Apple core – 8 weeks

Bananas and orange peels – 2 years

Cigarette butts – 18 months to 500 years

Plastic bags – 10 to 20 years

Plastic bottles – 450 years

· Chewing Gum - One Million Years

Apple cores take two months to decompose, while banana and orange peels, which have more fiber and less water, take at least two years to decompose. On both sides of some popular routes, before the discarded fruit peels have time to be digested by nature, new fruit peels are thrown by tourists. The fruit cores and peels on the roadside soon pile up into garbage pits. In summer, the rotten fruit peels will attract mosquitoes, flies, ants, wasps... Not only does it pollute the environment, but it may also pose a potential danger to later hikers.

Banana peels in varying states of decay collected from Ben Nevis, Britain's highest mountain | The Independent

When the rate of garbage accumulation exceeds the carrying capacity of nature, even fruit peels and cores that could have been naturally degraded will become a burden that cannot be ignored.

Of course, the solution is very simple: no matter whether it can be degraded or not, just take it all away.

No impact on nature? Even more wrong

Fruit peels that are discarded carelessly not only pollute the roadsides, but also harm the health of wild animals and change their natural behavior .

The fruit peels left by tourists have some common characteristics: they are of a single type, mainly fruit peels and cores; they are in fixed locations, mainly discarded at popular camping sites and around trails.

Wild animals need to consume a variety of foods to stay healthy. Small animals that feed on fruit peels and garbage for a long time will gradually become malnourished , and their reproductive ability and physical health will be damaged.

Throwing fruit peels outdoors is not good for wildlife | pixabay

A follow-up survey of endangered Egyptian vultures on the Iberian Peninsula showed that chicks that had long been fed with human wet garbage had lower levels of vitamins and organic compounds in their bodies and a weakened immune system. Glacier National Park in Montana, USA, reminds tourists: For national parks, natural fruit peels are not so "natural" . The park found that wild animals in the park are prone to indigestion and health damage after eating fruit peels and cores that are not from the local area.

Accustomed to eating fruit peels discarded by tourists, wild animals will become more dependent on humans, their hunting ability will decline, and their survival status will change greatly . According to a survey of Arizona National Park, elk in the park are accustomed to humans and move around the roads, resulting in a large number of traffic accidents and elk deaths every year.

Wild animals that eat fruit peels will get closer to campsites, trails and other human areas, increasing the chances of friction between wild animals and humans , including dangerous animals like wild boars and wild dogs (there are also wild boars around Beijing). If you always leave fruit peels on the roadside, the chances of encountering wild boars will greatly increase.

The MacLehose Trail, a famous hiking trail in Hong Kong, is a good example. Pictured is a wild boar digging into a hiker's tent on the MacLehose Trail.

In order to minimize the impact on the wild environment, when we are outdoors, we should put all the fruit peels into garbage bags and take them away . Don't try to hide the fruit peels deep in the grass or under big rocks. Once these fruit peels start to rot and emit odors, wild animals will dig them out. Don't try to burn garbage in the wild. Even if you are lucky enough not to cause a wildfire, wet garbage such as fruit peels is difficult to burn completely, and the fire pits that emit residual heat will more easily attract wild animals.

Fertilizing trees? No effect

Some people also think that the peels they discard will add fertilizer to the trees after degradation, and throwing away the peels is a "good deed." But in fact, composting is not that easy.

Guokr Nature introduced composting not long ago. Composting requires several weeks under a specific temperature and the action of microbial populations to complete. This process takes longer in nature . An adult tree will drop an average of 113 kilograms of leaves a year, and some trees will also drop fruits. These leaves and fruits will be decomposed into fertilizer for the tree itself.

Trees don't need the garbage left by humans as nutrition . Don't use "fattening the trees" as an excuse to litter.

Take toilet paper with you, too.

Some people think that toilet paper can also be naturally degraded, so they can be thrown outdoors. In fact, it takes 3 to 6 months for paper towels to degrade. Many paper towels contain bleach, fluorescent agents, and fragrances . As the paper towels degrade, these chemicals will seep into the soil and even flow into the water source.

Many people who camp outdoors have had this experience: after a day of trekking, they finally arrive at the designated camping site. After walking around a bush, they see piles of white toilet paper and discover that the Feng Shui location they chose is actually someone else's toilet . At this time, their mood can be said to be very complicated.

I hope there are fewer "white flowers" like this in the wild | lnt.org

Throwing toilet paper in the wild will not only disgust the tourists who come after you, but also harm small animals. Many wild animals will lick the salt in human urine, and they may also eat the discarded toilet paper. The chemical ingredients such as bleach in toilet paper will irritate the gastric mucosa of animals and harm their health. Around some popular "open-air toilets", people often see deer or squirrels holding toilet paper in their mouths. When throwing toilet paper, please think about their health.

The unsightly orange peel pit｜lnt.org

When planning an outdoor activity, we need to calculate the amount of garbage that will be generated and bring enough garbage bags . When we throw away fruit peels casually, the negative impact on nature will only continue to accumulate.

The attraction of nature to us lies in its natural beauty that has not been touched by humans and overdeveloped. Appreciate it quietly, take away the garbage, reduce the impact, let the wilderness remain wild forever, and leave the beautiful scenery to our next generation.

References

[1] https://lnt.org/out-here-its-trash-apple-cores-orange-peels-and-other-natural-items/

[2] https://lnt.org/true-or-false-you-should-pack-out-fruit-peels/

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/sep/24/bananas-litter-hikers-mountains-scotland

[4] https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/what-happens-food-trash-outdoors/

[5] https://lnt.org/what-to-do-with-toilet-paper-in-the-outdoo

[6] https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/nature/wildlife-habituation.htmrs/

Author: Li Xiaoya

Edit: Flip

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)

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