Meal-worms can turn Styrofoam, and other related plastics, into biodegradable waste!

Meal-worms chewing on some Styrofoam! Yu Yang, 2015

In awesome pollution mitigation news, from research recently published in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers have discovered that the gut microbes of meal-worms allow them to eat and digest the plastic in Styrofoam, polyethylene. The resulting waste, including CO2, is even biodegradable, meaning it could be used in soil for plants!

You can even see this in action with the meal-worms on exhibit in our Insect Village!

Take a gander at the article published in CNN to learn all about our plastic eating friends