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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.
Good, because if there's one thing we need, it's more atmospheric CO2.
polystyrene can be burned cleanly emitting the same amount of CO2 and also be refined through pyrolysis to useful carbohydrate usable as fuel in diesel and gas vehicles.
The only argument for using meal worms is that the Styrofoam is mixed with household waste or in a land fill where it's too dirty to recover.
This is a poor band aid for a failed recycle system!
Recycling centers don't like dealing with Napalm B, and your government would prefer you don't have it around also.
It seems to me that someone hasn't paid enough attention to certain science-fictional warnings. I can't be the only one who has read that book!