In the USA alone, every year 33 million tons of plastic are thrown away, and 30% is styrofoam. A foam cup takes 1 million years to degrade, so this is very damaging to our planet! Could the styrofoam-eating worm called mealworm be the savior of the future?
Styrofoam Foam Will Reach Your Dinner Tables
There is no doubt that sea animals eat plastic and styrofoam, there is also no doubt that the styrofoam will reach our dinner tables sooner or later. This is nothing we need to debate or question but still we are doing nothing about.
White styrofoam containers are one of the many things Trash Trash often collects while cleaning. This is the 5th largest polluter, and even if recycled, it will pollute even more.
When broken down, it looks like food for the sea animals, and it is swallowed by fish and other animals. As you know, other animals will eat these small animals, and up it goes in the food chain and finally the material will enter our digestive system, and we will get sick. By then, the styrofoam foam is so small, and we can no longer stop it from entering our body. In Thailand they now found micro plastic in the fishes who live in the Nationals parks in Thailand. These fishes should be shielded from micro plastic but sadly we can not stop it from spreading in all waterways.
Thailand Fast Food Vendors Hand Out 100k of Styrofoam Food Containers Daily
Thailand fast food vendors hand out 100 000 of Styrofoam food containers daily. Many more go out in the supermarkets and markets every day. You can imagine how many Styrofoam food containers are handed out everyday around the world and there is no plan or way to recycle them. Most of these styrofoam containers are put in small plastic bags with no real use with a sauce in another small plastic bag that just will end up in the trash.
You also have all the bottoms of fruit and food in supermarkets with a thin plastic on the top. These are not included in the 100 000 styrofoam above.
As of right now, there is a similar style container available, made from plants, and you can actually eat it! For whatever reason, food sellers do not use it. This could be because wholesalers simply make a bigger profit from the foam version, and do not let people choose. If the goverments just forced the sellers to pick the edible products it could save the planets from so much trash.Trash Trash has seen, and used, the plant-made container, and it looks and works the same way, but nobody is actually using it. All animals could eat those plates as well, not only styrofoam eating worms. We have tried to eat them as well. They do not taste bad at all and if you mix it with other food animals like pigs and others would eat it.
Mealworm Eats the Styrofoam, and Humans Eat the Worms
With styrofoam still being a major concern to our environment, one has to wonder: what can we do about all this styrofoam in nature? Well, the mealworm can help!
This worm is widely eaten in Asia and Thailand as a snack, people grow them on a huge scale. It is not so much a common tourist item, but many Thais eat it with delight and without any hesitation. However, most Thais do not know that styrofoam eating worms that they eat. As for now there are no producers of mealworms that feed them styrofoam and further research is needed to make sure it’s not dangerous.
Further Research Needed About the Styrofoam Eating Worms
Trash Trash is always looking for new ways to make life better for everybody, and after some research we found out that mealworms actually eat styrofoam! They are styrofoam-eating worms that actually could save us from these gigantic garbage mountains. In China they use cockroaches to clean out containers they fill with trash and they then harvest cockroaches for Chinese medicine. Cockroaches can clean out a container with food very fast, much faster than the mealworm eats styrofoam.
The worms do not get ill from eating it, and they release it via carbon dioxide within 24 hours.
However, don’t get too excited; one worm can only eat a pill size of styrofoam each day, so it takes a lot of worms to digest a foam package.
Can You Enjoy Mealworms as a Snack?
Scientist have not found any problems with animals that eat the worms, either, but they do
say it is not safe yet for humans to digest these worms just yet. Further studies are needed on worms eating styrofoam before you can stock up these creatures. Styrofoam-eating worms are sold as snacks in many countries. For example, animals and chicken and other animals love them, too. Will styrofoam micro plastic traces move from the chicken to humans if we eat the chicken or egg? We still don’t know but it’s really worth investigating. From what we know, half of what the mealworms eat could contain dangerous toxins, and could make it dangerous, but it is a step in the right direction. Perhaps in a few years styrofoam-eating worms could be a part of every household. Do you want to eat worms to save the planet, or just because it’s good? We all know that many governments around the world and powerful people like Bill Gates are pushing food based on insects and mealworms as well. Maybe in the near future styrofoam will be the diet for worms that are given as food to fishes and chicken and we then eat these foods.
We Need Your Support
If you like our article about styrofoam eating worms, please support our work bringing awareness to this issue, please go to our website and donate. We are planning many projects, but funds are a problem. Together we can help the planet we all live on stay healthy! We have been working with environmental issues in Thailand since 2012 with very little or no support.
