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 is aggravated during the COVID-19 pandemic through the increased use of single-use plastics from food takeaways 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 the organic and plastic waste, many of the solutions also cause additional problems. Increasingly proposed as a natural solution to man-made unnatural problems, there are insect solutions for dealing with the artificial and organic waste products towards a circular economy, making the use of natural insect solutions commercially sustainable. This review discusses the findings and how some of these insects, particularly the Hermetia illucens, Tenebrio molitor, and Zophobas morio, can play an increasing important role in food and plastics, with a focus on the latter.

Edible insects: Challenges and prospects

“…Recently there has been quite some attention to mealworms being able to degrade plastics. 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 2021). The capacity to degrade polystyrene also depend on the yellow mealworm strain used (Yang et al 2018).…”