Agriculture and Environment: Bananas

Better Management Practices: Reduce Wastes

Earth University in Costa Rica is using banana stalks to make paper and is selling rejected bananas for baby food or animal rations.

Because of the volume they represent, most producers will give rejected bananas to anyone who will haul them away.

Reducing the use of plastic
Earth University has also reduced its use of plastic by more than two-thirds and has implemented programs to recycle all the plastic that it uses (Panfilo Tabora, personal communication).

In several countries, companies have been established to recycle this plastic. These plastic materials are now recycled into furniture, pallets, or other packaging materials that diminish the demand for wood and therefore help maintain natural habitat.

Decomposing banana wastes
EARTH University has also found ways to hasten the decomposition rates of banana waste and harvest debris. The EARTH banana plantations produce some 20 metric tons of leaves and stalks per hectare per year. By spraying them with microorganisms that hasten their decomposition, EARTH not only eliminates the waste but creates a useful soil amendment (Panfilo Tabora, personal communication).

Producing "bokashi" out of organic waste
Recently EARTH University and some other farmers have begun to experiment with using bananas and stalks to make an inexpensive "bokashi," a fermented organic soil amendment that is nutritive and also supports the microbial biodiversity in the soil.

This technology has now been adopted in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Colombia. Waste bananas are ground into large pieces and then fermented together with a variety of mixed materials such as cattle or chicken manure and lime; microorganisms are added to enhance fermentation.

In some places, fertilisers are added before the product is applied to the banana plantations. As discussed earlier in the section on reducing pesticide use, this technique offers the added benefit of bringing nematodes to lower levels that can be achieved when using even the most toxic agrochemical nematicides.

Recycling water
Water is another waste product from production and processing bananas. EARTH University's packing house, as well as one owned and operated by the Dole corporation in Costa Rica, have already set up a system in which 50% of the water is recycled (Panfilo Tabora, personal communication). The released water is coursed through a sedimentation and settling waterway that improves water quality to pre-processing levels.

Better Banana-certified operations have reduced total water use by as much as 20% (Rainforest Alliance 2000). Not only is the water use declining, but by monitoring water quality and water use at strategically located sampling stations farmers have a much better idea about their performance with regard to the impacts of the agrochemicals they use.