Plastic Sheeting Eating Worms

Plastic has wormed its way into our lives but maybe a worm can help us eat our way out.

Plastic sheeting eating worms.

Plastic eating worms may offer solution to mounting waste stanford researchers discover. An ongoing study by stanford engineers in collaboration with researchers in china shows that common. Within a few days the worms started to burrow. Could a worm be the solution we need.

Does recycling actually help. When they placed the worms on polyethylene plastic they found that each worm created an average of 2 2 holes per hour. To get a better sense of how effective these worms are at rendering plastic into microplastic the scientists placed an adult and a juvenile in separate containers with styrofoam blocks. A study by brandon university in manitoba canada has found that.

Paolo bombelli and chris howe from the university of cambridge and federica bertocchini from csic discovered that wax worms galleria mellonella are capabl. With new evidence of the mealworm s plastic eating capabilities scientists plan to study whether the microorganisms living inside the worm s gut can breakdown polypropylene another form of. How thoughtful of nature to provide bugs that eat our rubbish. Mealworms are not only able to eat various forms of plastic as previous research has shown they can consume potentially toxic plastic additives in polystyrene with no ill effects a new study shows.

One particularly prodigious worm pooped out 482 pieces of microplastic. Overnight 100 wax worms degraded 92 milligrams of a plastic shopping bag. Plastics are everywhere and we can t seem to get rid of them. Is this the end of landfill turtles with plastic congested stomachs.

A waxworm in the lab. This article is more than 3 years old.