Bananas part 2

So after doing a little more research on bananas, and after Glenn's powerpoint yesterday, I finally have more stuff to say about bananas. First off, there were some outside of our hotel at Manuel Antonio beach, and we took one off the branch even though it was very green and opened it. It smelled weird and we definitely did not consume it. I also read the recent news that Dole has declared that it will purchase carbon credits in order to offset their emissions from transporting bananas and pineapples in Costa Rica. This is a leading move in the industry, and although not related to costa rica, Dole also began converting their some of their farming and harvesting equipment to run on biodiesel fuel in America.

On a different note, I researched a little about the Rainforest Alliance and their relationship with Chiquita in Costa Rica. Rainforest Alliance began their "Better Banana Project," an effort to "reduce the negative environmental impacts of banana cultivation and improve working conditions on farms". Bananas are the world's #1 consumed fruit so trying to improve the processes needed to grow and harvest bananas is very important for ecosystem health. Banana plantations got a bad rap back in the day when they treated their workers terribly, cut down forests to make more room for growing, and used tons of toxic chemicals. Slowly, this is changing. Chiquita's plantation in Costa Rica is Rainforest Alliance certified, denoting it as a much more sustainable type of banana plantation. Instead of just chopping all the trees down and farming completely flat areas, Chiquita began planting trees and bushes to border their fields to help prevent runoff and other things from spreading too far into the surrounding areas. They also tried to eliminate the use of poisonous chemicals that had been used and changed to better pesticides. Chiquita also increased safety regulations about how workers could come in contact with the fields that had been recently sprayed with pesticides. They also began recycling plastic bags, twine, and wood each year that have saved Chiquita a lot of money and have saved the environment from a lot of unnecessary waste.

http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/agriculture.cfm?id=fruits