Michigan’s cherry industry may have a way to make money from, of all things, the pits.
And to make soil more productive.
And to reduce toxic metals, such as lead and arsenic, in contaminated water.
Converting waste cherry pits for useful purposes could lower costs for processors and reduce the industry’s environmental impact by avoiding the need to dump the pits into landfills, according to a new study by Cornell University researchers.
There’s a growing realization that “disposing of homogeneous waste like this is a waste of a waste. Landfilling it seems kind of stupid in this day and age,” said study coauthor Jillian Goldfarb, a professor in Cornell’s Biological & Environmental Engineering Department.
Both environmentally and economically, “landfilling is not worth it when you have alternatives,” Goldfarb said.
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