Throwing my banana...

You don’t eat the peel?

It all depends on the setting.  At a well traveled crag we need to pack everything out, sometimes including poo.  In the middle of nowhere a banana peel won't do any harm.  I have used paper bags thrown to the wind instead of a poop-tube in extremely remote environments.

Tradiban wrote:

throwing a banana peel in the bushes.

"Throwing a banana peel"

Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Tradiban wrote:

Do you pack out your banana peels??????

In the deserts of the south west, for sure. I pack out everything I packed in or made while I was there (I make poop!) Stuff, including your poop just does not decompose in arid environments. I use doggie poop bags to carry out trash including banana peels and my own poops. But if I am in a super humid and wet environment like the butthole of America that is the Deep South then no, I throw that shit on the ground because shit there is a disgusting swamp anyway and the peel or poop will biodegrade real quick due to the wet environment. (Sorry to everyone that lives in the south, you have beautiful crags too, I just hate the humidity). 

This study shows the roll of scavengers in accelerating the (ahem!) decomposition process in the sanora desert. Of course in this we are talking about meat but perhaps the same applies to banana peels?

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1556-4029.12597

Yes. 

Hayden Brown wrote:

You don’t eat the peel?

I've heard you can get a good buzz if you smoke them. Then you don't leave them lying around. But what about the ash? And then the global warming effect from the burning. I can't take it!!! And just think of the carbon foot print I created from using electricity to post this! And from driving to the crag. But seriously folks... I basically agree w/ Abogado Chris on this one.

Bananas have relatively high amounts of radiation (for a food), which has led to the development of the unit of measure "Banana equivalent dose". Potassium-40 is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope that becomes concentrated in bananas, so think about that the next time you shove a banana in your mouth and leave that nuclear waste around my crags.

Matt Bentley wrote: Bananas have relatively high amounts of radiation (for a food), which has led to the development of the unit of measure "Banana equivalent dose". Potassium-40 is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope that becomes concentrated in bananas, so think about that the next time you shove a banana in your mouth and leave that nuclear waste around my crags.

Is this in the banana itself or the peel?

Tradiban wrote:

Is this in the banana itself or the peel?

Good question. I don’t know the potassium content of peel Vs. banana. I’d assume it would be high in both, since they grow together from the same plant, but that’s pure conjecture. 

Matt Bentley wrote:

Good question. I don’t know the potassium content of peel Vs. banana. I’d assume it would be high in both, since they grow together from the same plant, but that’s pure conjecture. 

Well, apple seeds, flesh, and skin all grown on the same plant, but only the seeds contain amygdalin (which is converted to cyanide if you eat them).

Andrew Krajnik wrote:

Well, apple seeds, flesh, and skin all grown on the same plant, but only the seeds contain amygdalin (which is converted to cyanide if you eat them).

BOOM!

I recently attended one of those wildlife shows where they bring out an animal or two to show the kids. The "trainers" mentioned to the kids not to throw trash out of cars because the animals they were being shown had been injured because they were scavenging food from the side of a road and were hit by cars. This makes sense, so keep your peels at least 100 yards from the road?

Related; it's been said that discarded human food can put an animal's diet out of wack, so to speak. Is there any studies related to this or is it just a theory?

Pick up that peel citizen. 

Tradiban wrote: I recently attended one of those wildlife shows where they bring out an animal or two to show the kids. The "trainers" mentioned to the kids not to throw trash out of cars because the animals they were being shown had been injured because they were scavenging food from the side of a road and were hit by cars. This makes sense, so keep your peels at least 100 yards from the road?

Related; it's been said that discarded human food can put an animal's diet out of wack, so to speak. Is there any studies related to this or is it just a theory?

Wild animals, always being near starvation, will eat anything they find. My dogs eat whatever they find when I let them run amuck in the woods. At my relatives cabin in South Park, Co., one of our dogs ate a rotting fish, she swallowed a whole rat (Twice), and I had to chase her away from a fresh cow pie. YUM!!! I would think that if they can eat that stuff, wild animals can fare even better. They already eat out of desperation, whereas our dogs eat nasty things out of instinct, their bellies being full of dog food. In other words, wild animals eat all kinds of things all the time, so their digestive tracts wouldn't be shocked by adding people food to their diets. I'm no scientist, this is just idle musing. But I can see the point about conditioning them to hang out on the shoulder of the road with traffic whizzing past at 75 M.P.hH.

Ray Pinpillage wrote: Pick up that peel citizen. 

The destruction of the environment (a walking trail, parking lot, human waste...) at the crag would be negated a small amount by introducing nutrients (bio-matter from banana peels or other biodegradable waste) into the local ecology. Our presence alone disrupts the local wildlife, so why not throw them a bone?

Floyd Eggers wrote: The destruction of the environment (a walking trail, parking lot, human waste...) at the crag would be negated a small amount by introducing nutrients (bio-matter from banana peels or other biodegradable waste) into the local ecology. Our presence alone disrupts the local wildlife, so why not throw them a bone?

Because a banana peel doesn’t biodegrade in the desert and other arid climates, for sure. That much I know, it’s even routinely posted on signs about littering when you enter desert recreation areas. And I am pretty sure that they don’t really even biodegrade into useful nutrients in a moist climate when they are just tossed on the ground. Tossing food scraps on the ground is just not the same as burying it in a compost pile. 

Trad...you should have been accosted and thoroughly flogged. PACK IT OUT!!