Would this item be here if I wasn’t?

I was walking through the trails of Mt Tabor last week and noticed someone had thrown their orange peel under a tree. An orange peel is organic, it’ll decompose so no big deal, right? Not exactly. Sure, that orange peel will break down, but the question is how long will it take? Answer, longer than if it had been put into a compost bin. But that’s not really the scope of the problem. Any food that’s thrown out, whether it’s an orange peel at Mt Tabor, a banana peel off a hiking trail or an apple core at the side of the road, it’ll attract animals. This ‘attraction behavior’ as it’s called, causes animals to overcome their natural wariness of people. They can also start to become dependent on human food, which means they stop eating and/or teaching their young how to find natural food sources. Before you toss food waste, ask yourself, “Would this item be here if I wasn’t?”

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