In the Silly household we compost all uncooked vegetable matter, which makes beautiful mulch and stuff for the vegetable patch I must get round to clearing out. We compost a large amount of banana skins, melon rinds, mango cores and so on.
Now, I may be ignorant, but I am not aware that Britain is renowned as a banana, melon or mango-grower. It occurs to me that places that do grow such delicacies tend to be areas where soil quality is predominantly poor - Burkina Faso supplies mangos from sub-Saharan Africa.
We should have a duty to return all vegetable/fruit waste products to the area that the vegetable/fruit was originally supplied from. This way, we don't degrade the quality of their soil any further, and they can enrich the soil using the rotting flesh of the vegetables/fruit that came from their area.-- PeterSilly, Nov 29 2002 (?) Send your AOL CDs here http://www.nomoreaolcds.com/ [angel, Oct 05 2004] (?) The 'Break of Dawn' saga. http://www.lihistory.com/9/hs9garb.htmThe sad tale of one man's attempt to send Long Island's garbage to South America. [DrBob, Oct 05 2004] To increase diversity, why not send them compostable parts of plants non-native to them?-- angel, Nov 29 2002 Can we send them AOL CDs too ?-- 8th of 7, Nov 29 2002 Shirley if the soil is poor they wouldn't be able to grow all this lovely rich fruit?-- egbert, Nov 29 2002 Try this on a local level first - take some skin of whatever to the local grower of whatever - with an explanation, of course - and see how long it takes for the skull-scratching to begin.-- thumbwax, Nov 29 2002 When you say "*we* should have a duty", do you mean we as individuals or we as a country? I, for one, am not flying all the way to the Bahamas just to take my banana peel back.-- DrBob, Nov 29 2002 Soil quality degradation isn't really about whether people compost their banana peels, it's a complex issue that has a lot to do with agricultural practices.
Besides, you know those questions customs asks about whether you've been on a farm, whether you're carrying any vegetable or animal products, etc.? There are reasons for those, and just imagine their response to "oh, I'm just shipping out a few metric tons of household compost".-- egnor, Nov 29 2002 [egbert] - the point being that the fruit would naturally degrade within dropping/spitting/flying distance of the tree it came from. By continually taking the goodness out and not putting it back, eventually you won't be able to grow bananas or mangos because the soil quality will be too poor.
[DrBob] - I would have thought that would have sold the idea. "Can't come in to work today, got to fly to the Bahamas - on recycling duty". btw I didn't say that we had to do it personally. We could have recycling bins where the contents get flown back to wherever - people place the fruit/vegetable waste in the appropriate geographical bin.-- PeterSilly, Nov 29 2002 random, halfbakery