Worming the Circular Economy for Biowaste and Plastics: Hermetia illucens, Tenebrio molitor, and Zophobas morio

Abstract

The negative impact of the modern-day lifestyle on the environment was aggravated during the COVID-19 pandemic through the increased use of single-use plastics from food take-aways to medical supplies. Similarly, the closure of food outlets and disrupted supply chains have also resulted in significant food wastage. As the pandemic rages on, the aggravation of increased waste becomes an increasingly urgent problem that threatens the biodiversity, ecosystems, and human health worldwide through pollution. While there are existing methods to deal with organic and plastic waste, many of the solutions cause additional problems. Increasingly proposed as a natural solution to man-made problems, there are insect solutions for dealing with the artificial and organic waste products and moving towards a circular economy, making the use of natural insect solutions commercially sustainable. This review discusses the findings on how some of these insects, particularly Hermetia illucens, Tenebrio molitor, and Zophobas morio, can play an increasingly important role in food and plastics, with a focus on the latter.

Edible insects: non-food and non-feed industrial applications

“…The degrading of polystyrene and polyurethane by both these species was associated with distinct microbiomes (a number of genera of bacteria were mentioned) although similar changes in chemical groups in plastics have been observed (Wang et al, 2022). Kuan et al (2022) showed that yellow mealworm, the superworm and Galleria mellonella utilise polystyrene and polyethylene for mineralisation as a carbon source. They identified some bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the superworm as the cause of polystyrene degradation.…”

Edible insects: Challenges and prospects

“…Gut microbes may facilitate the conversion of plastics such as polystyrene by mealworm species, such as T. molitor , Tenebrio obscurus , and Z. morio , but also by H. illucens (Kuan et al . 2022; Lou et al . 2021; Yang et al .…”

Superworm (Zophobas morio) breeding for papaya stem waste management

“…Superworm eats any type of feed even including plastic (Jiang et al, 2021;Luo et al, 2021;Yang et al, 2020). The astonishing thing about this animal is that it can survive without eating even for up to three weeks (Kuan et al, 2022). Of course, superworm can live well when given organic feed intake (van Broekhoven et al, 2015), especially feed with fibre above 5% (Li et al, 2016).…”