Break down styrofoam in days instead of hundreds of years
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- A paper came out recently showing the common mealworms could eat, survive on and break down styrofoam. I decided to test this with a different species to see if this is something more insects could do. And sure enough they can! Could be a great way to deal with our plastics, feed them to the bugs!
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The human race: One million super worms can get rid of our plastic supply!? We can save the planet!
A lizard boi: One million super worms you say 👀
Sam Hayes *Zuckerberg starts sweating uncontrollably
the government starts shaking uncontrollably
And what happens when the worms become beetles? We'll have to destroy them else we'll have a beetle plague!
The Reptilians master plan has been solved
MAARRRRKKK!!!!
1:13 "... so when the paper came eut"
Me: Oh he's a Canadian
Or someone who speaks english
@@leomadero562 you obviously don't get it
@Ovadya eut
Ovadya In the US (give or take Wisconsin) we say “Owt”
Does this raise issues with micro plastics? It’s the only draw back I can come up with.
Really impressed with the out of the box thinking though!
It isn't plastic anymore if the chemical composition is messed with by the digestion of the little worms. So basically no issues! :D
You are right. Although the foam material is broken down, the arising problem of microplastics being found in ocean , lake and even bottled water. After the pellets have been broken down, what now? There is still a plastic material that needs disposing of and a large portion of it would most likely end up in the ocean or in another ecosystem that it doesn’t belong in. So a good concept but would create problems that are probably just as harmful
i dont think so, it seems eventually the plastic gets processed so much it just turns into poop
@@carterdecuir3760 it would probaably just be left in the original landfill to eithet be eaten or degrade at an accelalerated rate thanks to the breakdown process its already gone through
So did it eventually turn to soil?
To really make a proof of concept you should have the worms turn the Styrofoam to soil and then plant a tomato in it or something.
agree. this is bullshit
i once saw some Fly in my toilet in a time when it was super dirty. the fly ate my urinal residue aka. urinal stone ....
Doesn't have to be soil nessasearly. Things like coco, promix and other non soil product cant grow plants better then soil if given nutrients.
@@mathquik1872
uhm, thx for sharing.... xD
Wyatt Smith
w8, I dun get it.
U mean because many plants can germinate without any nutrients in the soil...? I think growing a full tomato out of it would be pretty impressive.
Or maybe it needs a few more nutrients than the styrofoam can provide, I dun really know how that works .
@@mathquik1872 That's nice, more details, please.
set up a recycling plant with this worms. grind the waste n the worms into powder and sell it as fertilizer
hmmm smart, but what about PETA?
@@MCAroon09 set up a vegetable right groups to opposed them. We will gather up all the plant n Gardners to protest at their protest
@@paulboh1417 intresting, maybe we can also have Greenpeace on our side? Plastic is serious pollutant
@@MCAroon09 absolutely right, we grind them up too
You could also sell them as a food too
Styrofoam, hmm.. I think they sell that at my local grocery store in a bag and call them "rice cakes", what's the difference? *chomp* :p
Ricey Ricey rice no one likes rice cakes
Surfy Player that's where you're wrong kiddo
For you... ruclips.net/video/0iAuw5dxQFg/видео.html
I like rice cakes too
@@surfyplayer8231 lol
No one:
Superworms in 2032: WHERE WE DROPPIN BOIS
This comment is great
Save your money to buy a flamethrower >:)
Ostanovit Already have one. Check out the XM42. It’s fun on a bun! Everybody loves it. Better than that stupid Ellen Musk. His is the pilot flame for mine.
Nice use of the metric system. Well done! It's so nice to just be able to move that decimal separator.
American marvels at the genius of metric system. 😂
@@ImportNinja Nah. Not American. Was just happy for him.
I don’t like the metric system.
Landfills are awesome, the idea of getting rid of the plastics is great but unnecessary, we would never use more than a few percent of a percent of the land, that’s not a typo, even when you factor in an unrealistic amount of growth it would never take over a percent of our land in the us, landfills are crazy awesome and people always forget it.
I'm going to do this.
Ideally I'll make it industry.
I'm starting now.
Cool. The more people who do this the better. Help rebuild our dying planet
There are many communities in which Sytrofoam cannot be "recycled". Here, it's more akin to condensing it (melting) rather than actually recycling it.That would seem an endless supply of product to be procured from a deal with local businesses perhaps, to take back Styrofoam packing products in order to drive the study. I'm very late to this video, but it seems worth a shot.
bullshit wesley. You look like one of those guys who always has a plan but never follows through. You're like the guy who sells chuck e cheese tokens on the corner and tells people they are bitcoins.
LOL
Don´t do it bro, the original mealworm paper was later proved to be a mistake. The worms can chew it down but they cant digest it, nor they gut microbes do. I know your comment is already year old and it´s probably late, your company already producing kilotons of worms :) but maybe you can still be saved
Mealworms: "Great, big marshmallow!"
"Sir what do you want me to do with the traitor?"
"Toss'em to the worms."
I LOVE THIS! How does eating styrofoam effect the next stage of the worm = the beetle stage?
Honestly that is extremely interesting
Another option is to hose down the styrofoam with acetone, which could be recovered and have a still usable plastic. A combination of worms and acetone could be ideal, along with another method.
*Me going to my local petstore to pick up my own batch of super worms to see this for myself*
Why not simply make food containers out of meal worms? The name kind of fits too!
Alright McDonald's now bring back styrofoam cups.
Wouldn't it be more practical to just isolate the bacterium.
worms break styrofoam down to smaller pieces faster than bacteria alone and that bacteria might need a host for specific living conditions.
@@Juke172 That is indeed a good point. Using worms might still be the easyest way. It might still be possible to first crush the styrofoam and break it down with machines and then simulate the digestive system of the worms for the bacteria to live in. Also some genetic engineering on the bacteria might be benneficial. I guess we just need more research to find out the most effective way of doing this.
I say let em do their job. Crunch that stuff up with their mandibles. Burns up the energy. Gives em something to do.
you need to do this experiment again, this time pre-feed the worms styrofoam so no other food is introduced, and weigh the worms before and after and see if they gain any weight
Nice! Good to see how the super worm turns....styrofoam in to soil that is!
There is nothing wrong with putting plastic in a landfill. It spent a hundred million years underground before it was plastic. The problem comes from letting it loose in the environment.
Uhm, do you happen to live near a landfill, or have seen one lately?
They're getting effing huge. How is that sustainable?
@@ChuckD59 Yes, that's a consideration. There's not a shortage of space on Earth, but the cost of transporting waste may become an issue. My point is that biodegradability isn't essential. Glass is not biodegradable, it's melted rock. Burrying it is like burrying any other rock.
Watched the entire video but not sure if I missed this information exactly or not. But how can we be 100% sure that it's not just turning into microplastics that can't be easily seen but still contaminate the environment and food chain? The hard part isn't breaking it down into smaller pieces. It's what to do with the tiny pieces.
It would be interesting to test what is given off by the process. I recently learned that Styrofoam is a bunch of benzene rings stuck to a hydrocarbon chain. So, are the worms consuming the chain and releasing benzene, the other way around, or making something else that may be better or worse? It would make a good experiment, but I wouldn't know where to start with determining the outputs.
And now you gave me a biopunk idea
I think it would be prudent to analyze that superworm poop. See its composition exactly. Else we get particulate microplastics just seeding everything (moreso than now).
Use the worms as feed. Or compost them, you might even get some Methane to help run the lights.
The plastic doesn't dispose. It still takes thousands if not millions of years to do so. The worm is only turning the plastic into micro-plastic, so that we can't see it. It's still there, but it's microscopic. Lots of the fish we eat contain micro-plastic which smaller animals that the fish eats have eaten.
Krill, a small crustacean in the ocean which the blue whale base their diet on, is hurt by micro-plastic. If a human eats micro-plastic it goes through, we don't think much of it. The krill can die.
This is amazing but please put a worm sensitive warning
I wonder if the worms did gain any weight. If so then its very interesting cause it means the foam is digested and converted to protien.
I've seen styrophome cups broken down in the woods after only a few years, I think. Less than hundreds of years. They develop holes and rot.
What happens to the biology of the worm? And what happens when another animal (like a bird) eats the worm? Are there traces of Styrofoam in the worm? Or is it converted to something better to eat?
You could, you know, read the article linked in the description
@@austin503 you could, you know, be smart enough to realize there's no article linked in the description. you could, you know, not be an arrogant loser in every facet of your life.
@@somedudestolemyname The article is linked in the first comment.
It's okay, 2019 will give you a trophy too.
@@jonathanreynolds7886 that's not the description now is it, white boy?
These worms and fungus will destroy landfills
Great! Thanks for popularizing the paper!
It's not broken down, it is simply shreaded. It is still styrofoam.
What does breakdown mean? Are you sure the worms just didn't change a big piece of Styrofoam into a bunch of little pieces? A saw blade does this to wood. Sawdust is still wood though.
I’m happy that this guy is using metric system.
Just waiting for the radioactive eating worms
I'm curious what the by products are?
Did the worms make it to the bug stage, were the bugs able to reproduce and at what rate? You have to have a continual supply of worms.
Cool. There is a possible drawback - Are you familiar with a TV program made back in the 1960s entitled "DOOMWATCH"? In one episode, a bacteria that was developed to consume plastics escaped from the lab, and spread quickly. Power fails due to short circuits, cars stopped working, planes falling out of sky, etc. Imagine what that would be like TODAY!?
Therefore, if I eat these worms I could eat styrofoam 🤔🤔🤔
Edit: Food for thought 🤔🤔🤔
i think the problem would be is keeping the worms interested in the Styrofoam, i mean if you had a farm of this it would stand to reason that eventually there attention may be divided between this and other food sources. i cant see them picking styrofoam over what ever else it is they eat each and every time and if you had a really huge farm of this to break down a really big amount of Styrofoam i think the elimination of other potential food sources would be the issue ... of course I'm just thinking out load cuz really dont know what they eat in the wild, I'm guessing other fungi and stuff if it grows somewhere?
We would have to devise a way to eat the larvae later, though. Otherwise the cycle is not complete and the environment is going to become, quite literally, too buggy after a while.
there are predators of superworms
naa meal worms are the bottom of the food chain. Animals would looove the surplus of buggy food. hell even some humans would probably eat it
Dimm Vargr both the larvas and beetles could be used as chicken food,,, trout food and so on..
Did you weight the worms before and after? Did they gain size and did they extract something from the foam?
I have a process that breaks down styrofoam in minutes. It's called fire.
It's good till they turn into a beetle and there's no way to get rid of them except for insecticides which would contaminate the styrofoam keeping the worms from eating it
How we loathe the music. Made me stop listening.
If it is in fact bacteria that breaks down the Styrofoam then surely a small sample could be extracted and then grown in a lab to produce large quantities or even better the substance that the bacteria produces to break down the Styrofoam could be collected from large quantities and be used to dispose of the Styrofoam on a large scale. This would also be useful because then we wouldn't need large quantities of worms that would then need to be killed when they become beetles
i would breed Silk worms to eat plastic till they produce a silk nylon hybred.
I wonder how long the worms will live eating only styrofoam?
How to clean landfills of stirophome.
Just put thousands of these worms in there.
If they can thrive if this stuff the population of them should grow rapidly and the clean up should quickly accelerate
Don’t forget! Darkling beetles are an invasive species
He probably got to feed the lizard
So the worms can eat it and break it down, but are they getting any nutritional value from it for them to live long healthy lives to perform this function or would their diet need to be diversified for this to work at scale?
The polystyrene would have tasted better a few years ago..... when there was a McDonald's hamburger in the middle.
I'd sidestep the worms, as they are just the middlemen, and just harvest that bacteria and isolate it and make it into a solvent/solution that you could spray on different grades of plastic to see which one is the best to break down. Then recommend that governments force manufacturers through law to only use this grade of plastic that is capable of being degraded by the bacteria.
What happened to your follow up video where you used thousands of super worms?
I didn't get if the platsic was chemically altered or if it was just broken down into microplastics. What does the waste consist of chemically?
Why didn’t people find this out a long time ago??
But what about all the beetles at the end.
I really hope you didn’t give those worms to the lizard after. The Who you are what you eat thing is incredibly important with reptiles. This looks like a way to pass on chemicals to pets. However if we can figure out what bacteria or chemical in the worms breaks down the styrofoam if could be mass produced to get rid of our wast. If the worms tho can break down the styrofoam to a level that’s not harmful this will be amazing!
What was the by product of that, and how can these worms survive on just styrofoam. Great video.
Awesome news! Would you have concerns about feeding those worms to your lizards? I probably would... I wouldn't want to eat a steak full of bits of plastic inside of it.
No one:
Green parties: write that down, write that down!
what does eating plastic does to the worms? I mean isnt it unhealthy?
And if the grow up to a beatle what you do with them?
Christoph S.
Well apparently it doesn’t effect them, if they grow up you put them in a different tank and hey make more worms
this could save the earth- like no joke
A huge amount lf these worms also mean alot of these bugs and that is a risk u cant take cause its a huge burden for the enviroment, this could mean large scale deforestation etc
Great vid but they’ll turn into beetles unless they’re very cold
Who knew there is nutrition in styrofoam.
Can they eat it exclusively? They get nutrition from it?.
What if you just melt all plastic into some acid? What’s left over should be degradable right? Then again, I thought plastic is recycled. Why is it now being destroyed in such manner?
Yeah but I can break down styrofoam is minutes. On an unrelated note, anyone know where I can get gasoline in bulk?
What if you isolated the bacillus cereum bacteria?
I'm curious if there's a lot of microplastics in the worms after they eat the foam? Also what happens if the beetles hatch? Can you use 1 million beetles for anything?
Plastic recycling maybe.
Are they getting any nutritional value from it or are just the bacteria? They could eat all day and still starve to death if they aren't.
Imagine mafia throwing people in those pools. Ew
This is just awesome. Thanks for posting this video
So isn't this just removing the "expanded" part of the product? E.g. removing the air in the Styrofoam and making into denser version of the same plastic?
The same could be achieved via heating or else chemically. End result is less volume but still plastic. In other words: you've broken it up and shrunk it, but still got plastic.
How do the worms get any nutritional value out of breaking down styrofoam? What would happen if a Human ate the stuff?
But how would they be contained
I love the Beatles. John was the walrus
Win 777 They ate styrofoam? Is that when they started that Mystery Tour stuff?
I believe it was, smoking weed & eating styrofoam.
Incredible!!!! I hope people start breeding them to eat it
Shaymalan twist. The beetles that sprout forth take over the world
I feed these to my bearded dragon.
Hey where’s the second video about this? Why was it taken down?
Is this being implemented yet? I hate how i cant recycle styrofoam
You must be Canadian
2:16 Union worms get mandatory breaks. Geeze everybody knows that.
Oh no silly, I don't hire Union
@Jacob Zondag insert homestead massacre ptsd here
They might have been pushed to work with that deunionized water.
Most 1:25am video ever
ruclips.net/video/v-pohBi4slI/видео.html
No, this is.
Ruben Lipoan holy shit right when I looked at this comment it was 1:25 am
I was just thinking I should have gone to bed 2 hours ago. Why am I still up watching this.
2:09 am for me
Ruben Lipoan lmao I started watching at 1:30 am😂
So if we could somehow culture that bacteria en masse, maybe we could skip the super worm step? 🤔 This is exciting stuff! 😁
Like giant bio-reactor tanks?
The question is. They know it but dont use it. Why....?
@@trex70you try to pitch that idea to investors
@@crackedemerald4930 just wait 10 years when millenials actually have money to invest
It's pretty pointless. Styrofoam isn't hard to process, just not worth it.
i'd be interested to see what if any effect this has on the worms long term, and what unusual biproducts may be being produced that arent immediately obvious
Es poo poo
@@jeezosdude867 lol
Yes, like do they continue growing pupating, and breeding.
@@lynnbishop9493 Yup, I keep the adults as pets.
I would be curious to see the chemical composition of what is leftover after the worm is completely done with the Styrofoam. Also what happens to the worms generational y after only consuming Styrofoam. You mention that a bacteria in the digestion of the worm is or may be responsible for the breakdown what happens to the effectiveness over time of this bacteria after only consuming Styrofoam? Over all a VERY interesting subject ! Well done Sir.
Also, would it be better to use only that bacteria without worms?
@@kristitynvaellus2782 They may not be able to live out side the host it is common for gut bacteria.
@@heimerblaster976 that bacteria has been cultivated in labs so it is possible. Just like E. Coli lives in the gut but you can still get it on your food.
The 'defecate' is a fertile soil from what I heard him say in the narrative. 🤔
@@fljetgator1833 Ya but in curious if in the chemical composition of the worms defecate their are any undesirables after all over several tons of Styrofoam spread around the planet and used in the food chain/environment it would be significant to know specifically what is left over. Once broken down and spread all over the earth it could make it worse than the original problem.
imagine working at that landfill, i would have nightmares of falling into a pit of worms every day...
Why, they are literally harmless.
edit- in fact, if anything its the worms that should be scared of you falling in, because you would kill thousands of them.
@James Henry So, exactly the same bio hazard as falling into months of garbage in a normal landfill? In fact, considering the worms would degrade the garbage quicker than just letting it sit out it would probably be safer to fall into a worm pit than to fall into a normal garbage pit.
Cryptic Cobra they can bite you and often injure lizards’s eyes and face
@@LegDayLas A jar of them is harmless. I don't know about falling into a pit of them and drowning in them. Either way it'd be pretty freaking horrific imo.
@@Dollapfin oh shit your right, I forgot that i'm a lizard.
This needs some serious scientific investigation in terms of Microplastics, food chains and what other plastics they can digest
well no shit if youre going to use this method world wide. even if this is the solution alot of investigations will be needed
They arent breaking it down. theyre just pooping it back out in little balls... weigh the poop that is undigested and youll realize no energy came from the foam for the worms. stop trying to be smart when youre just an idiot watching a youtube video. "This needs some serious scientific investigation in terms" stfu kid
@@saltmage2435 Well it at least breakign it down to smaller pieces it a step forward, do you have a better idea?
@@saltmage2435 In summary, the weight loss and molecular weight decrease
of the PS samples supported the conclusion that strain YT2,
which was isolated from the mealworm gut, was capable of
degrading PS.
That is from the research paper.
@@saltmage2435
omg omggg he said stfu kid omgg hes so cool !!!1!1!!1
it's important to test the life cycle and reproductive cycle and offspring of generations of these bugs after consuming the styrofoam, also what impact and contents of the frass is....
+nuclearthreat545 All that coming in a future video. First I need to make more so it's easier to test. Also going to try culturing the bacteria to see if I can get them to break down styrofoam without the help of the worms.
+nuclearthreat545 I suspect you have been infected to a great degree by social sympathies.
It is NOT important, at any degree, to test the life cycle and offspring of worms that consume Styrofoam.
Maybe marginally interesting but in no way is this kind of study of any substantial value.
Wouldn't you want to know if the beetles can properly reproduce, thus you can continue to use the same lineages rather than have to have a breeding stock? I would think it would reduce costs if you were to monetize the process.
+Dan Tyler wouldn't it make sense if used in the way suggested in the video used a million at a time it would be good if they could reproduce and not die right away. That way they could be reused... The same batch of bugs to eat more garbage.
How is this going?
So, very late, I just started breeding mealworms, and came across this information (then found this video). Besides how fascinating it is, there's two things I want to point out: One, it is unknown if they retain anything harmful from the Styrofoam, minus HBCD (a highly toxic flame retardent used to treat at least some stryofoams) which is passed into their waste, the frass (making the frass toxic), so eating them or feeding them to... anything is probably not ideal. And as I said, the toxic HBCD is passed into their frass, making their waste a toxic (but concentrated!) byproduct.
The main concern is gone, and a toxic chemical is concentrated in their waste. The main question I have now is; how can/is that toxic chemical dealt with?
My second question is, why has this not become, or at least been investigated as, a major potential practice?
Hi Steven, I know this comment is a year old but hopefully you're still active on this account. To answer your first question, right now there's no efficient way to remove the chemical (HBCD) from the egested frass of the superworms/mealworms. BUT that's exactly what I want to investigate and find out. I've read online that HBCD can be potentially degraded using a combination of phytoremediation and bioremediation (the use of plants are microbes to detoxify HBCD in the environment). I plan on setting up a mini experiment at my home over this summer to investigate which methods would work the best in eliminating this chemical, but I'm still deep into my research phase.
To answer your second question, with the current technology we have now, it's almost impossible to apply this type of discovery to major recycling plants, simply because these worms are TOO SLOW! To give hope though, a bunch of scientists are deriving the enzymes found in the mealworms and superworms, and ENGINEERING the enzyme's molecular structure to make them FASTER at biodegrading polystyrene.
Hopefully this helps! Respond back if you want more information.
@@pinksyndrome90 Different to the original poster but really enjoyed the comment, would be grateful to have a linkcto anything concerning engineered enzymes to speed up the process
Completely false
Exactly the information I was looking for, thank you.
Please I need updates
One question; what happens when some of the worms (larvae) get out into the wild. This is inevitable if used on an industrial scale. Are the adult beetles an invasive species risk?
John Palmer they’re not winter hardy at all. They’re tropical, so most of the US will not support them. At least I know that mine were let out in the beetle stage and they never made it.
From the little I gathered on Wikipedia, the beetles are mostly interested in vegetation scavenging. They mostly eat forest litter or decaying plant matter.
@@Dollapfin Isn't that what they told us about killer bees?
Mankind (and women) will never learn. Just keeps on messing with nature.
also, couldnt you like, breed them to not to do that?
Anthony Thorp it’s 80 years too late to worry about these specific worms spreading, they are used around the world to feed lizards and as crunchy snacks like chips.
You know how potatoes are invasive in Europe but also the reason people have food? Screw nature, it’s not delicate.
Today: superworms eat Styrofoam..
Decade from now: Mothra
i got you to 100 from 99 likes
@@zoomitasit6014 pre she ate you...:)
@@jarredjones8476 im sadly not edible but thanks.
@@zoomitasit6014 everything is edible with the right wine pairing.. so hannibal lecter says.. lol
@@jarredjones8476 not if i eat them first