Toss it on the coffee grounds. n.m.
it may degrade…but it’s still trash
…it might get eaten by critters, but it’s still TRASH for the next person to see. It may not be eaten or degrade before the next person uses that area. Have you ever pulled off to a gravel bar for a campsite or lunch break and find where the last person there left an old apple core or banana peel or similar degradables? It’s TRASH and another person’s half-eaten lunch is nasty looking. Carry it out and throw it in a trash can back in “civilization” or on your compost pile if you have one.
Hey String
You learned a lot in the great “Orange Peel Debacle”!!!
Interesting.
If it fell off a tree and layed there to rot, is it significantly less offensive? Perhaps if it fell off a tree and were partially eaten by a critter so it had teeth marks on it. Would it then be some animals trash?
While it may be so that you might find someone’s apple core up to a day later, I would find it hard to consider trash. Millions and millions of apples degrade around the planet each year. If we touch one, that suddenly makes it our responsibility.
But I would have thrown it on shore. I believe it would decompose much quicker there. They are usually half brown by the time you finish chewing. Hopefully, the invasive apples seeds won’t sprout and forever change the ecology of the swamp.
Wait for a billy goat gruff to come by
and fatten him up with it – you troll
if you eat it all the way down …
– Last Updated: May-13-10 11:07 AM EST –
...... what's left are the seeds , the stem and that funky thing on top ... oh the delima , can I live with the guilt , pocket or drop em ??
Last time I threw something real hard it hurt my shoulder , so I'd probably drop em .
Maybe a purist would save them up to make apple soup ?? Maybe a skin cream or shampoo mash ??
Waste not , want not !!
Maybe a real tough purist would just swallow the the little leftovers and transport them out via internally for relocation back to the metropolis ??
Feed it to the dog
… then let him decide where to put it
the dog - that’s funny lol , but true !!
another option
My favorite college professor was an eccetric ex-hippie who would ride his bike to work, down the hall and into the classrom. Then he would proceed to eat an apple in one hand while solving differentai equations on the board with the other. The WHOLE apple: stem, seeds, core, everything.
I have tried this, but the seeds are pretty bitter and have a small amount of cyanide in them. I would throw the core into the woods.
I dispose of mine in the spots
where people won’t go and it won’t be seen but biodegradable is going in the bio, not the landfill.
our responsibility
Apples that fall from a tree are not your responsibility.
Apples that you carry somewhere in your lunch bag are certainly your responsibility. The question is what you decide is the best way to deal with that.
I generally follow Leave No Trace (www.lnt.org) principles. That keeps it simplest. Pack out what you carry in, and don’t remove anything else on your way out. That’s the best way to keep The Wild wild, and to make sure it’s that way when I, or other users, return.
Will that apple core get eaten and/or degrade in a few weeks? Probably, but maybe not before the next person arrives. And if 50 people go through there in a month, and all leave their “biodegradeable” food waste, maybe it’ll start piling up. Or maybe racoons will start hanging out there more. And Bit by bit The Wild becomes just another city park.
I
find the seeds taste…just like another kind of nut with a slightly differant flavor…I eat the entire core and never worry about where or how to throw perfectly good food.
Best Wishes
Roy
I would only do it
if I saw someone else do it first
Hey, this is a science topic …
… not an ethics topic. Although the ethics would be interesting if I revealed that I had picked the apple off a tree right there.
I should add for the biodegradation issue that the swamp is about 98% water and 2% land at the average water level it was at. The water is filled with all varieties of carp, gar, catfish and many other ugly things I don’t understand. There is probably minimal land animal life.
My hypothesis was that the apple core, like the kilotons of other floating vegetative detritus, would eventually sink into the botanical muck on the bottom of the swamp.
Don’t forget the tons of treated sewage
Columbia dumps into the Congaree River that flows guess where.
I am disappointed though.The orange peel post, based on a real incident,hit 200 easy and it got really ugly!
One of my finer no troll intended efforts.
Unintended consequences
On the Youghiogheny River in PA for decades many raft companies stopped at Lunch Rock on river left. Customers were instructed to throw their apple cores as far up the bank as they were able.
When raft trips started on the Yough there was a stable population of rodents (chipmunks) and snakes (copperheads). When the food source improved (apple cores) there was an explosion of chipmunks, so great that the snakes could not consume enough to keep the rodent population in balance. Over years though the snake population increased to balance things out.
But the introduction of a seemingly endless food source, high in carbs and vitamins caused the chipmunks to grow in size and stature over a number of generations. Being rodents, they multiplied like…rodents, finally growing to a size where the copperheads were unable to swallow them whole. And some of the chipmunks grew to such a size that they were behaved like mongooses, aactively hunting the snakes and killing them with their (now) large incisors. Some even became carnivores, their offspring growing even larger due to the introduction of protein into their diets.
To this day the ecosystem is still not stable. In the 80s raft companies stopped throwing apple cores and now haul them out with the trash. But the damage was done. First, customers complained about the fact that everywhere they walked they were seeing, and sometimes stepping on tubular reptiles. Then some of the larger, more aggressive chipmunks started raiding the lunch lines, carrying off apples, bologna sandwiches and once even a whole jar of industrial peanut butter.
The problems with Lunch Rock, with the simple catalyst of discarded apple cores, finally caused the raft companies to abandon the site. Populations of snakes and chipmunks initially crashed but are now returning to normal, and the body masses of the rodents and snakes are shrinking towards the norm.
But even generations later, with no additional apple cores as food, there is an in-bred memory of the event. To this day you can see groups of confused-looking chipmunks staring at rafters as they pass by Lunch Rock on their way to the new site, downstream and on river right. They may have never tasted an apple, but their memories do not fade.
Jim
I can see that on heavily traveled
– Last Updated: May-14-10 10:40 AM EST –
waterways.If the chipmunks grew larger, why didn't the snakes grow larger also?
The snakes did grow larger
but since they do not breed as prolificly as do rodents the evolutional advantages of larger size did not show up as quickly.
Jim
What to do with the stem?
My problem would have been what to do with the stem. A college roommate taught me to eat the apple completely. So the the only thing remaining is the stem. I usually throw that out the car window.