The study revealed that feeding a 100% polyethylene diet to waxworms led to increased microbes in their guts

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Waxworms have the ability to eat and biodegrade plastic. (Credit: Brandon University)

Researchers from the Brandon University (BU) in Manitoba, Canada have found that waxworms, the caterpillar larvae of the wax moth, have potential to eat non-biodegradable waste and help in addressing the global plastic waste problem.

The team involving Dr Christophe LeMoine and Dr Bryan Cassone from the BU’s Department of Biology, in their study, revealed that waxworms have the ability to digest and survive on non-biodegradable plastic including polyethylene, a material used in shopping bags and several many other applications.

Waxworms can survive on plastic for more than one year

As part of the project, the researchers isolated a species of intestinal bacteria in the worms and found that waxworms were able to survive on plastic for more than a year.

According to the study, feeding a 100% polyethylene diet to waxworms has increased the microbes in their guts compared to worms that were fed their normal diet or were starved.

LeMoine said: “Plastic-eating bacteria are known, but in isolation they degrade plastics at a very slow rate.

“Likewise, when we treated the caterpillars with antibiotics to reduce their gut bacteria, they were not able to degrade the plastic as easily. So it seems that there is a synergy between the bacteria and their waxworm hosts that accelerates plastic degradation.”

The researchers, who dubbed these worms as plastivores, are working to identify the exact nature of the byproduct of the plastic degradation which is glycol, a form of alcohol.

Cassone said: “Worms that eat our plastic waste and turn it into alcohol sounds too good to be true. And in a way it is.

“The problem of plastic pollution is too large to simply throw worms at. But if we can better understand how the bacteria works together with the worm and what kind of conditions cause it to flourish, perhaps this information can be used to design better tools to eliminate plastics and microplastics from our environment.”

The researchers are also working to study the characteristics of both the waxworms and the bacteria in order to understand the conditions required for them to maximise their potential to degrade plastic.