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The examples given in the article are difficult to dispose of waste products from other food industries such as brewing. We're already making beer. Might as wel

The examples given in the article are difficult to dispose of waste products from other food industries such as brewing. We're already making beer. Might as well use the waste products for something productive.

jbob2000 7y ago
It's not easy to convert waste to a commodity. Recycling has a big problem with this - if the waste isn't provided in the right way, then it's totally useless (ie. plastics need to be completely clean, all food waste has to be washed out, otherwise it just goes to the landfill). What if different breweries output different quality waste? Some is too watery, some too thick. Is it now worth it to reprocess this waste to make it usable? Is the collection and processing of this waste cheaper than just growing food for the flies?
- jacobedawson 7y ago
  The article makes it pretty clear that the soldier flies aren't fussy at all: “They’re generalists,” Tomberlin says, and eat just about anything. Pig manure? Check. Human waste? Check. Food scraps? Check. The only organic materials they haven’t had luck with are bones, hair and pineapple rinds, he says.
- RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
  >It's not easy to convert waste to a commodity. Recycling has a big problem with this - if the waste isn't provided in the right way, then it's totally useless (ie. plastics need to be completely clean, all food waste has to be washed out, otherwise it just goes to the landfill). We need to acknowledge that the requirements of 'almost-perfection' required in our recycling stream is something we built into it. We had reusable systems that operated without issue for decades that we discarded in favor of modern co-mingled recycling (which is obviously failing us). There's no rule of recycling or reusing that says the parent material needs to be pristine in its condition to be recycled, thats a rule we introduced because of how 'we' thought to do recycling. We could build re-usability back into our systems, we are choosing not to do so.
- pharrington 7y ago
  For these maggots, our waste is it's fuel. Biology's produced a whole bunch of bizarre, extremely niche DNA coded self replicating machines. If the machinery is already there, and the ethical concerns are minimal, why not exploit them?
antisthenes 7y ago
How scalable is this then? What happens if the local breweries can only supply 50% of the waste demand for the larvae? What if it's not 50% but only 10%? How do you feed the insects then?

jbob2000 7y ago

It's not easy to convert waste to a commodity. Recycling has a big problem with this - if the waste isn't provided in the right way, then it's totally useless (ie. plastics need to be completely clean, all food waste has to be washed out, otherwise it just goes to the landfill). What if different breweries output different quality waste? Some is too watery, some too thick. Is it now worth it to reprocess this waste to make it usable? Is the collection and processing of this waste cheaper than just growing food for the flies?

jacobedawson 7y ago
The article makes it pretty clear that the soldier flies aren't fussy at all: “They’re generalists,” Tomberlin says, and eat just about anything. Pig manure? Check. Human waste? Check. Food scraps? Check. The only organic materials they haven’t had luck with are bones, hair and pineapple rinds, he says.
RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
>It's not easy to convert waste to a commodity. Recycling has a big problem with this - if the waste isn't provided in the right way, then it's totally useless (ie. plastics need to be completely clean, all food waste has to be washed out, otherwise it just goes to the landfill). We need to acknowledge that the requirements of 'almost-perfection' required in our recycling stream is something we built into it. We had reusable systems that operated without issue for decades that we discarded in favor of modern co-mingled recycling (which is obviously failing us). There's no rule of recycling or reusing that says the parent material needs to be pristine in its condition to be recycled, thats a rule we introduced because of how 'we' thought to do recycling. We could build re-usability back into our systems, we are choosing not to do so.
pharrington 7y ago
For these maggots, our waste is it's fuel. Biology's produced a whole bunch of bizarre, extremely niche DNA coded self replicating machines. If the machinery is already there, and the ethical concerns are minimal, why not exploit them?

antisthenes 7y ago

How scalable is this then? What happens if the local breweries can only supply 50% of the waste demand for the larvae? What if it's not 50% but only 10%? How do you feed the insects then?