MDARD - PHOTO RELEASE: MDARD Director Gary McDowell Celebrates Michigan's Robust Cherry Industry During National Cherry Festival; Visits Great Lakes Packing, Orchard View Farm & Altonen Orchards michigan.gov - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from michigan.gov Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Capital News Service
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.