Every year, people in the United States throw away 2.5 billion plastic foam cups—and that’s just a fraction of the 33 million tons of plastic that Americans throw out each year.
Less than 10 percent of that total gets recycled, and the remainder presents challenges ranging from water contamination to animal poisoning.
Enter the mighty mealworm. The tiny worm, which is the larvae form of the darkling beetle, can subsist on a diet of Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene, according to two companion studies (first, second) coauthored by Wei-Min Wu, a senior research engineer in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.
Microorganisms in the worms’s guts biodegrade the plastic in the process—a surprising and hopeful finding.
“Our findings have opened a new door to solve the global plastic pollution problem,” Wu says.
