Bananas Capitulo Dos

Well I am still looking forward to my first visit to a banana plantation. For some reason I thought I would see bananas all over the country but I really haven't been. I guess that we have been either in San Jose or in tourist spots for most of the trip so I suppose it makes sense that I am not seeing bananas everyday with the exception of my breakfast plate.

One thing that I have realized with the help of Lindsay is that the state of the bananas is definetly different down here than in the United States. I didn't notice it right away but now it makes sense. The bananas I have every morning for breakfast are perfect. They are just to my liking because they are very rip to the point that they have some brown spotting on the peel, which is just the way I want them. When you visit a grocery store in the States you only see bright yellow or even green bananas. I don't like them this raw so I usually have to wait a few days before I eat them. Exporters like Costa Rica send out the bananas when they are very raw and green so they are nice and yellow and attractive to consumers in North America. What is left for the Costa Ricans to eat is the riper bananas that many Americans would consider too far gone, but I think are just perfect.

As I had mentioned in my first blog bananas pose some harmful affects to the environment. A page from the WWF website explains some of the consequences to banana farming. "The volume of waste produced is at least equal to the volume of bananas produced," says the site. That's an amazing thing to think about; That everytime I eat a banana there is that must waste that is also produced and put out into the environment. The banana is a pretty popular fruit so I know that the sheer volume of bananas produced each year is probably astounding, which means the watse and residues produced is also going to be astounding and very detrimental to the environment.

One of the main wastes of banana farms is the organic waste, that is the banana plants themselves and the bananas that are not good enough to sell. In 1996, the number of rejected bananas in Costa Rica alone measured over 225,000 metric tons. Unfortunately banana producers do not always dispose of these wastes properly and that is when the harm is done. I never would have thought that growing bananas could result in killing fish. But when the waste is dumped into rivers by irresponsible farmers these can be the consequences.