“This potentially means that other bacteria that are known to fortuitously break down other chemicals could break down plastics under the right conditions.”īrandon says degrading plastic with bacteria outside the mealworm is currently slower than the rate a mealworm is capable of, but under the right conditions, the degradation is “more rapid than other bacterial systems to date.” She cannot share some details – including the names of the bacteria – as the research has not yet been published.
“It shows that in the right environment these already-known bacteria are capable of plastic degradation,” she continues. “Interestingly, the bacteria we identified are not crazy new, unheard of bacteria – they’re bacteria that have been associated with the breakdown of other environmental pollutants before,” Brandon tells CNN. CNNįurther research has now isolated the plastic-eating bacteria found in the mealworms’ guts and grown them outside of the mealworm. Stanford PhD candidate Anja Malawi Brandon in the lab. But harnessing their biology could present new opportunities for how we deal with waste plastic. When mealworms eat polystyrene – the material used in Styrofoam, and often found in packaging – they excrete half of it as carbon dioxide, and some as partially degraded particles, raising concerns they could add to the growing problem of microplastics – tiny pieces of plastic that can end up in the food chain. It takes around 3,000 to 4,000 mealworms about a week to eat one Styrofoam coffee cup, and it’s the bacteria living in their guts that break down the plastic, says Anja Malawi Brandon, a PhD candidate at Stanford University researching the subject. Scientists have known for some time now about their ability to eat certain plastics, and researchers are now learning more about what’s going on inside mealworms and replicating the process outside them. Growing to more than 2cm long, mealworms are the larval stage of the mealworm beetle. Can’t stomach the plastic pollution that washes up on beaches, kills sea life and makes its way into the food chain? Well mealworms can – literally.
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