THE CLAPPER 2018-2019 | Page 60

Plastic Wastes May Taste Delicious for Mealworms
In Stanford University, the engineers started an
investigation in companionship with Chinese researchers
to dispose of plastic wastes from the environment
securely and naturally by using mealworms, Tenebrio
molitor, since this larvae species can biodegrade different
types of plastics. (Stanford, 2015) Tenebrio molitor is a
member of the Tenebrionidae family, which is a larva
that grows into two species of darkling beetles as yellow
mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor, and dark mealworm
beetle, Tenebrio obscurus. Mealworms are domestic to
Europe. However, they are now distributed worldwide.
Their lifespan varies between 280 to 630 days, and they
can reach up to a length of 32 mm (Tran, Gnaedinger &
Mélin, "Mealworm (Tenebrio molitor)", 2018).
According to the statistics, 2.5 billion plastic foam cups
are thrown into nature in the U.S. Considering that plastic
wastes remain in the oceans for about 450 years without
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being decomposed, 269,000 tonnes of plastic particles
are currently swimming in the marine environment
which distracts the marine life too much by trapping
the fish, entering their stomachs, disabling them from
ingesting anymore and releasing toxic materials. (Plastic
Pollution, n.d.). The studies at Stanford University stated
that only less than 10 percent of the entire waste gets
recycled.
In the experiment, the mealworms were collected from
Beijing and Qinhuangdao, China, and Ham Lake. The
researchers divided the mealworms into two groups
as bran-feeding larvae and Styrofoam-feeding larvae
in order to investigate the effect of Styrofoam diet on
the survival rate of mealworms against a control group
that is fed by an ordinary nutrient. The Styrofoam was
not treated with any additional supplements before the
experiment. As seen in figure 1a, the mealworms created