Foam-Eating Worms May Offer Solution To Mounting Waste

ckwu writes: Polystyrene foams—including products like Styrofoam—are rarely recycled, and the materials biodegrade so slowly that they can sit in a landfill for hundreds of years. But a pair of new studies shows that mealworms will dine on polystyrene foam when they can't get a better meal, converting almost half of what they eat into carbon dioxide. In one study, the researchers fed mealworms polystyrene foam and found that the critters converted about 48% of the carbon they ate into carbon dioxide and excreted 49% in their feces. In the second study, the researchers showed that bacteria in the mealworms' guts were responsible for breaking down the polystyrene--suggesting that engineering bacteria might be a strategy for boosting the reported biodegradation.

Comments

CO2

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, because if there's one thing we need, it's more atmospheric CO2.

By all means

[Anonymous Coward]

Please spread polystyrene eating bacteria indiscriminately. Because it's not used as light structural support in anything at all.

That CO2 was locked in that plastic

[mpercy]

Polystyrene would keep that CO2 sequestered for what, 1000 years or so? And now they've just released more into the atmosphere with the cow farts and Volkswagen emissions!