Banana Peels May Clean Water

Other than placing them in the road and hoping an enemy walks by and slips on them, there doesn't seem to be many uses for the banana peel. Unlike some other fruit (we’re talking to you, orange), we can’t zest the peel for added flavor in cooking, or eat the peel, like an apple. Once you've eaten the fruit inside, the peel just becomes a useless, black, slimy, smelly remnant of yummier things. Right?
Perhaps we’re not asking enough from our fruit by only requiring them to be tasty. That seems possible with the banana, particular since a Brazilian researcher, Gustavo Castro, how happens to be both an environmental chemist and a banana lover, has found that the peel of a banana may be able to clean polluted water.

Castro said he had often heard that the peel of the banana was the most healthy part of the fruit, so he decided to take a look at the chemical composition. What he found was nitrogen, sulfur and organic compounds such as carboxylic acids – the very acids that can bind with metals that commonly pollute waters by industrial facilities.

So he tried it, taking chopped up, dried banana peels to the Parana River in Brazil, which has both copper and lead pollution. And guess what – the peels worked just as good if not better than many water filtering systems being used, and they can be used up to 11 times before they’re no longer effective. Plus they’re cheap.
Another great scientific breakthrough that could lead to cheaper costs for water purification, and more respect for one of nature’s tastiest treats.

Source: http://www.tinygreenbubble.com/eco/environmental/item/2095-banana-peels-may-clean-water