There is a floating patch of garbage in the Pacific Ocean that is the size of Texas, there are 2.12 billion tons of global waste produced each year, and scientists estimate that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans. With numbers so staggering, environmentalists would be excused for looking to the heavens and pleading for help in this time of great need. But recent findings are suggesting that the very help they seek may be found right beneath their feet.
A study published in the Journal of Environmental Science & Technology found that mealworms can biodegrade Polyethylene (PE), as well as Polystyrene (PS), via digestion, into carbon dioxide and smaller pieces of plastic without suffering any increased risk of mortality (Brandon et al., 2018). Polyethylene is the type of plastic we use for, among other things, our plastic bags and plastic bottles. This study builds off a string of other recent studies which found that mealworms are capable of biodegrading Polystyrene, a.k.a. Styrofoam.
The research was conducted by arranging the worms into six different groups which were each fed a diet of either bran (a more conventional mealworm diet), PE, PE + bran, PS, PS + bran, or PE + PS. They found that, over a 32 day period, the worms which fed only on PE degraded 48% of the plastic, and the worms which fed only on PS degraded about 32% of that plastic. These numbers went up when the worms were fed bran along with either plastic. When fed PE along with PS, the worms degraded about 65% of the PE!
This is the first study to demonstrate the biodegradation of mixed plastics within the insect gut, but don't expect it to be the only one for too long. The researchers are hopeful that it is the omnivorous nature of the larvae gut that enables them to munch out on these plastics. If so, there are sure to be other insect larvae which can help us get rid of our plastic waste. So perhaps with a little bit of ingenuity, a significant cutback of global waste production, and a whole lot of scientific funding, we can eventually get around to reducing the size of the Great Pacific garbage patch to something a little more manageable, say, maybe the size of the DFW-metropolitan area. No magic necessary.
References
Brandon, A.M., S. Gao, R. Tian, D. Ning, S. Yang, J. Zhou, W. Wu, and C.S. Criddle. 2018.
Biodegradation of Polyethylene and Plastic Mixtures in Mealworms (Larvae of Tenebrio
molitor) and Effects on the Gut Microbiome. Environ. Sci. Technol. 52:6526-6533
-Enrique Alvarez
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