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Mealworms can compost styrofoam
- asdf333 6y agovery cool!
- aeoleonn 6y agoWhat synthetic chemicals remain in bodies & excrement of the mealworms? Assuming synthetic chemicals are not somehow metabolized into natural chemicals, then the problem remains.
- ars 6y agoSince polystyrene has only carbon and hydrogen in it, the number of problematic chemicals you can make from it is quite limited. Not zero certainly, I'm sure a chemist could find some, but starting from polystyrene (which is very stable) and ending up at a problematic chemical is unlikely because the mealworms are using the polystyrene for energy, so I would assume they fully oxidize it, leaving just CO2 and Water.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- legulere 6y agoYou mean like for instance the known carcinogen styrene? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styrene https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styrene
- ars 6y agoThat's exactly the point: You're not going to go from polystyrene to styrene without inputting energy (like in a fire). These mealworms are not going to generate it, they can't.
- skinkestek 6y agoIsn't polystyrene just styrene blocks chained together, meaning going from polystyrene to styrene should be quite doable? Full disclaimer, my chemistry knowledge is very shallow (advanced high school level I guess).
- detaro 6y agoDoable, yes, but as the parent said you need lots of energy, because you need to tear the chemical bond apart again, and that is quite strong in polystyrene and thus doesn't easily depolymerize. If I remember right the industrial process for it is at a few hundred degrees C and high pressure. (solvents etc will do all kinds of weird things to polystyrene, but it won't just fall apart into styrene molecules again easily)
- skinkestek 6y agoThanks, makes sense then :-)
- aeoleonn 6y agoSo is the answer then that some synthetic chemicals remain? If so, do you know approximately which ones and in which amounts? Just curious.
- ars 6y ago> So is the answer then that some synthetic chemicals remain? That's the opposite of what he said. He said other chemicals can not be created.
- ars 6y ago"Fed with Styrofoam as the sole diet, the larvae lived as well as those fed with a normal diet (bran) over a period of 1 month" I do not believe this claim. Polystyrene has only carbon and hydrogen - so where are the mealworms getting nitrogen for protein synthesis? If they are getting it from the air, that's pretty major, and I highly doubt it. Another problematic claim: "and the rest into mineralized organic material" What mineral exactly are they making that is usable for plants? Carbon and Hydrogen would leave just CO2 and water as waste products. What could they possibly be making?
- aaron695 6y ago> I do not believe this claim. The biomass didn't increase for the Styrofoam eating mealworms. It did for the bran eating meal worms. Would that fit? 10.1021/acs.est.5b02661
- ars 6y agoIt makes sense. It implies the mealworms can use it for energy, but not for growth. It's basically a carbohydrate, they would need some protein, fat, and trace elements for proper growth.
- spodek 6y agoNot making Styrofoam in the first place is a better answer. Among other problems, Wikipedia states: "The EPA and International Agency for Research on Cancer reported limited evidence that styrene is carcinogenic for humans and experimental animals, meaning that there is a positive association between exposure and cancer and that causality is credible, but that other explanations cannot be confidently excluded." (with links to EPA reports) A quick search found NoMoreStyrofoam.org http://nomorestyrofoam.org http://nomorestyrofoam.org, which says a lot more.
- igetspam 6y agoNow I just need to know if these worms would harm my chickens. They (the chickens) already try and eat foam packing material that gets blown out of trash cans on windy days. The worms can't be worse, right? We don't eat the chickens and barely eat the eggs (they're pets), so no risk to us.
- dexterdog 6y agoWhy don't you eat the eggs? I have ducks as pets and I love the eggs.
- igetspam 6y agoWife is vegan, kid doesn't really like them and I just don't eat a lot of food. Nobody is really all that interested. We eat some but the chickens are free range and since the last move, we haven't found their nesting ground. We get one a day is a predictable place and the rest are who knows where. Even with one a day, we give about half away.
- dexterdog 6y agoHuh, I thought chickens were more predictable and nested. Ducks sometimes just drop and egg while they're walking around, but mine stay in a pretty small area so they're easy to find if they haven't broken them.
- ffhhj 6y ago>The mealworms are able to do this due to their gut bacteria (Exiguobacterium sp. strain YT2) that actually breaks down the polystyrene. > The fact that these worms are converting about half of the styrofoam they eat into carbon dioxide and the rest into mineralized organic material suggest that it has come full circle. The bacteria breaks the molecules and shouldn't harm the animals that eat them.
- blackrock 6y agoIs the next step to breed and harvest the bacteria? And use that to just break down the styrofoam?
- torgian 6y agoThat's a pretty cool article. Would be limited to potentially fertilizing gardens with their leavings. Couldn't eat the worms since there would be plastic particles still in their guts.
- rodone 6y agoMealworm’s gut bacteria break down the styrofoam into usable organic matter! - Click to Tweet
- chrischen 6y agoSince they emit CO2 anyways, is this much more efficient than just burning the foam?
- Jkvngt 6y agoAnybody have a TLDR? livingearthsystems.com is protected by Imunify360 We have noticed an unusual activity from your IP and blocked access to this website. Please confirm that you are not a robot
- dumpHero2 6y ago"each worm can eat 0.127mg per day" That sounds too less to be considered a feasible recycling method
- elil17 6y agoKeeping hundreds of thousands of worms is pretty practical. Commercial mealworm growers are storing at least that many. You could easily keep a couple thousand at home. The real barrier to styrofoam recycling is transporting it (it takes up so much volume) and cleaning off food from it. This can be easily done at home and requires no washing of the styrofoam so it eliminates both of those issues.
- mikesabbagh 6y agoAnybody knows if those are sold online? I would grow them and feed them all the stuff i get in the mail!
- jedberg 6y agoI did a science fair project once in elementary school. My project was to see what materials would break down styrofoam. I took a big chunk and broke it into pieces, leaving each in a jar of different liquid (and burning one). As one would expect, burning it worked really well, but of course let off a ton of black smoke. But you know what else fully dissolved the styrofoam? Coke. One week in a jar of coke and it was gone.
- yourapostasy 6y agoSolvent-based methods have some unfortunate side-effects, and are difficult to scale [1]. Low and slow heat appears to work. I'm still trying to find reports of anyone who takes end user styrofoam and turns it back into desired styrofoam shapes with carbon dioxide as a foaming agent, entraining it into the closed cells. I've yet to hear of people who reduce styrofoam into polystyrene being able to turn it back into styrofoam again, but can't tell if that is an outcome of the chemistry/thermochemistry (very difficult to address), or lack of foaming equipment (addressable with enough expertise, space and capital). Ideally, I'd like to figure out a way to take all styrofoam entering say a neighborhood as end user packing gets continuously turned into standardized insulation interlocking blocks that is continuously, incrementally installed into buildings that are pre-built with say, 2-4 meter thick wall cavities for incrementally build up the insulation over time. The styrofoam that enters our lives as packing material for a brief period and becomes unwanted detritus ends up in multi-decade and hopefully multi-century building insulation. I want to do the same with the polyethylene used for most bags, though for those I'd want to turn them into sheets and use them for endlessly making Kaizen foam to organize, protect and store my tooling. [1] https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/topic/has-anyone-tried-polystyrene-d-limonene/ https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/topic/has-anyone-tri...
- throwaway201103 6y agoStyrofoam isn't safe for household insulation. It's very flamable and produces heavy black toxic smoke.
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- radicalbyte 6y agoHere in The Netherlands we collect styrofoam with the recycling, it is then turned into a high value insulation product used to help insulate our housing stock.
- devy 6y agoTurning the waste into building & construction materials is definitely going to be one of the major industrial ways of low-carbon polymer recycling.
- bob29 6y agoIts already Here and its not necessarily industrial scale either its called EPSCrete [1] Yep no need to transport your styrofoam to a recycler and buy back some insulation product when you can make it yourself [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_polystyrene_concrete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_polystyrene_concrete [2] http://www.norishouse.com/archives/582 http://www.norishouse.com/archives/582
- chrisseaton 6y agoReduce is better than re-use - I don't think I've seen styrofoam for the last few years in the UK. Cups and food containers are paper and packaging for things like TVs is now shaped cardboard. What are you still getting in styrofoam over there?
- domano 6y agoEvery monitor and tv i have ever bought used it for transport. (Germany)
- SturgeonsLaw 6y agoIt's very common in the packaging for computers and monitors that we order, although shout out to HP for transitioning to almost full cardboard packaging for their desktop PCs.
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- TheRealPomax 6y agoThe answer to which question, though? Sure, some organisms can eat styrofoam, and raising vast quantities of them is one outbreak away from a massive invasive species problem. So yeah, in the lab this is "a" way to get rid of a small amount of styrofoam, but it doesn't solve the styrofoam problem. Banning styrofoam is half the solution there, and the other half is un-economically expensive.
- throwaway201103 6y agoArticle link is returning a 403 so haven't read it; Does this release carbon in the form of CO₂? If so it's better to leave it as-is, or recycle it into other products in ways that don't release carbon.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago[deleted]
- hh3k0 6y agoReading the article and your comment afterwards brought Simpsons to mind: Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend. Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards? Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards. Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse? Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat. Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas! Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y agoFunny, the comment I posted was one line: "Used to feed mealworms to pet chameleons as a kid." Got immediately dinged with a DV. I was merely recalling a childhood memory of "mealworms". Maybe someone thought I was suggesting some kind of remedy to a potential invasive species problem? Nothing of the sort. I am all too familiar with real world invasive species problems and the historical remedial failures associated therewith. Totally different subject.
- projektfu 6y agoWho knows why you got downvoted, but please don't be so sensitive that you delete comments you'd stand by. It's annoying to find deleted/edited comments that have replies.
- neuromute 6y agoI did not downvote you, but I figured I’d let you know that based on what you said I’m pretty sure you were downvoted because your comment brings nothing to the conversation. People on HN tend to prefer informative contributions to the discussion, just for future reference.