Plastic-eating mealworms native to Africa discovered:
Scientists may have discovered an unlikely ally in the fight against plastic waste: the lesser mealworm. Native to Africa but now widespread across the planet, a beetle larvae from the Alphitobius genus can consume and degrade plastic, the researchers found.
The finding could be particularly useful in combating plastic pollution in Africa, the researchers noted. The continent is the second-most plastic-polluted continent in the world, despite producing only 5% of the world's plastic pollution, according to the World Health Organization.
In the study, published Sept. 12 in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers found that the lesser mealworms can digest polystyrene, a type of plastic commonly found in Styrofoam food containers and packaging. The team isn't sure of the species yet, and think it may be a new subspecies that needs to be identified.
This finding follows similar results with other mealworm species worldwide. "However, this is the first time that the lesser mealworms, which are native to Africa, have been documented to have this capacity," study author Fathiya Khamis, a scientist at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Kenya, said in a statement.
Journal Reference:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.9b06501
See also:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Monday May 05, @06:20PM (2 children)
So we make plastic. Worm eats plastic. Animals eat the plastic worms. We eat the animals. Not sure I like or care for that circle of life. It would have been more beneficial if it had turned the plastic waste back into oil again.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 05, @08:12PM
The animals that eat the beetles that the worms become, most often, are chickens.
I'm all for rendering the chicken fat into oil...
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 05, @08:18PM
Not sure I found the right worm...but at least some worms have high oil content. So there might be hope of turning some of them into biodiesel?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 05, @08:10PM (1 child)
Is it the meal worm digesting the plastic, or a novel bacteria in its gut?
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(Score: 4, Informative) by looorg on Monday May 05, @08:43PM
From what I gather it must be some kind of gut bacteria, enzyme or something such etc. So if we can just extract that from said worm, or replicate it, we could just have that and and spray on the plastic. Instead of having plastic worms in the food chain.
I'm sure they are safe, or safe:ish or further testing required or deemed to be within acceptable norms or levels for plastic consumption in human food. Perhaps chicken or pigs or whatnot like plastic worms. Pigs eat almost anything as far as I can recall and it doesn't seem to have any ill effects on the bacon and pork.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by corey on Monday May 05, @11:13PM (4 children)
I just returned home from a family vacation in Vietnam for 2 weeks. We went to Lan Ha and Ha Long bays in the north near Hanoi, where we did swimming and kayaking. I am astounded by the level of plastic pollution there. There are a few thousand little islands in the bays and they are idyllic, with karst cliffs covered in tropical forest, with occasional yellow-sand beaches. Every beach is covered, literally, in material pollution. Mostly polystyrene (aka styofoam), in the form of small round pellets or entire foam boxes. There are also plasic bags everywhere. And there are lots floating in the water too. It was quite moving for me, I come from Australia where our beaches are very clean and if I ever saw a piece of plastic at a beach, I'd pick it up and take it with me to a bin - which is rare. The beaches were like those in the movie, The Beach. Secluded, backed by coconut trees, the water and air was warm. It's a bit soul-crushing to see the plastic rubbish everywhere.
I started thinking of how I could start a NGO to fund development of technological solutions to clean the waste, but it would be difficult given the variation in type and size of the plastic waste. The mealworm potential is good. However I think I'd need to raise a billion dollars and employ 10,000 local people with it, to go from island to island, and along the coast, to manually collect the waste. Then there's the other issue of how to stop people dumping in the first place. Though, I'm not much of a business-savvy extroverted entrepreneur so I am likely to not end up actually doing it.
I also observed local fishermen throwing plastic bags and bottles into the water after they used them. So as I said, cleaning the place is only one part of the solution / challenge. The other is cultural change and I think it'd take a generation to change: education of the children in all schools to deal with waste properly and protect the environment. The old guys won't change, a bit like opinions on climate change. I was talking to a local and he was telling me that the rural people are more concerned about local gods and their wrath having an effect on local weather and crop yields, rather than the science of climate change.
Having said all that, it's not just the Vietnamese who need to change. The tourist and container / cargo ships to/from China, Taiwan, etc that pass through Ha Long bay (to Haiphong, etc) are probably a bigger source of the plastic pollution.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday May 06, @01:25AM (2 children)
IIUC, mealworms don't like salt-water.
The other question, of course, is do they actually digest the plastic, or do they just chomp it into tiny bits and use it as roughage. Bacteria are marvelous things, however, so actual digestion of it isn't that unlikely.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday May 06, @01:31AM (1 child)
Sorry, I should have looked at the article first. It appears that the mealworks are chomping the plastic into microplastics and then shitting them out again. The article was specific that the mealworms weren't accumulating the flame retardant that they were studying, but instead ejecting it in their shit. I'm assuming that goes for the rest of the plastic, since they were considering the mealworms as a protein source.
OTOH, that does place the microplastic residue in a nearly ideal environment for bacterial degradation.
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(Score: 2) by corey on Tuesday May 06, @06:24AM
Yeah, I was thinking the same. To break down the polymers into simpler compounds, it would require enzymes or bacteria as I understand. But increasing the surface area using mealworms would help speed up the process by a lot. I remember reading recently (maybe last year) about plastic-eating bacteria which actually break down the polymer chains, into gasses or ammonia or something. I'm sure it was posted here on SN, I might see if I can dig it up.
Now I just need a $1b to start the project off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 06, @08:08PM
Heyyy small world!
(Score: 3, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday May 06, @10:25AM
The worms should probably not be used in the food cycle. Even if they can digest plastics, digestion will not be complete thus leading to enrichment of microplastics in the food chain. In Europe, dew worms have been identified as enriching PFAS which as a consequence ends up in eggs of freely roaming chicken.