Overview 

Costa Rica grows close to a third of the world’s pineapples across roughly 58,000 hectares, and the crop leaves behind an estimated four million tonnes of stubble, leaves and crowns a year. Most of it is burned or ploughed back in volumes the soil cannot process, which turns a nutrient return into anaerobic decomposition, methane and declining fertility.

The Challenge 

Residue management is the point on which the sustainability of the whole pineapple sector turns. Reincorporating more than about 75 tonnes per hectare a year exceeds what soil microbes can process; large operations return up to twice that. The result is soil sterilisation and nutrient lock-up, which drives further dependence on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, which in turn releases nitrous oxide and acidifies the soil further. Burning the residue avoids the soil problem but creates an air quality one.

There is a second market on the other side. Global pulp remains more than 99% wood-based, and pulpwood plantations continue to expand at the expense of biodiverse forest. Non-wood pulp represents a small share of global pulp supply but is expanding faster than wood-based pulp, a development of growing strategic relevance to the sector. A residue that is currently a disposal cost could in principle serve that demand.

Technical Assistance 

The SCF Technical Assistance Facility, led by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in collaboration with Catalytic Finance Foundation and Gold Standard, has funded three studies to support the project.

Grants 1 and 2: Economic pre-feasibility and environmental and social studies

The first study tested unit economics, market demand, the franchise structure and the potential for verified emission reductions. The second assessed the environmental and social picture against the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions. Together they produced four findings that will inform any subsequent decisions regarding investment and deployment at scale:

• Residue management is the central leverage point for the sector, affecting soil health, environmental performance and operating efficiency alike.
• Feasibility is constrained mainly by logistics and economics: moving high-moisture biomass is the bottleneck for any centralised model, which is what the modular design is built to avoid.
• Feedstock recovery in the field carries the highest local environmental and social impacts and is the least defined part of the design.
• Social benefits are promising, but not automatic.

Grant 3: Greenhouse gas assessment

On the recommendation of the environmental and social study, the SCF Technical Assistance Facility has commissioned a greenhouse gas (GHG) assessment as part of the project’s preparation. It is intended to establish an evidence base for the project’s climate case ahead of any investment consideration, and is structured around three questions:

• Net mitigation: whether residue conversion delivers a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions relative to current practice, accounting for the displacement of wood-based pulp.
• Key sensitivities: which operating parameters, such as transport distance, energy source and the share of biomass diverted to on-site energy, determine that outcome, and the thresholds beyond which the net benefit no longer holds.
• Replicability: whether the net mitigation case is applicable to other feedstocks and sites, including other regions with comparable crop residue streams.

The assessment is expected to report results as ranges, with assumptions and data gaps stated explicitly, and will be based on standard provide a GHG accounting applied to the project’s own pilot operating data as it becomes available across feedstocks and sites. It is designed so the same calculation can be reapplied and refined as the project adds feedstocks or sites. Robust, transparently documented evidence of net GHG impact is a standard requirement before climate finance investors commit, particularly for waste and agricultural-residue valorisation projects, where outcomes are sensitive to project-specific factors. An assessment grounded in real operating offers a consistent reference point for project preparation across Central America and the wider Latin American region, and a consistent basis on which lenders and investors can assess comparable projects.

Pending the assessment’s conclusions, the emissions and deforestation benefits set out below remain targets not yet substantiated by evidence.

There can be no guarantee that the investment will be completed on the terms described or implied above, that SCF will be able to successfully invest in such project or that impact targets will be achieved.