Degradable plastic from...fly carcasses 😂

source

Just finished reading a cool piece about a proposed method on making biodegradable plastics from fly carcasses😂

Dunno how efficient this method will actually turn out to be, but I am all in it for it just for the lulz. Nasty little fuckers, farming them like chickens just to kill them and turn them into something useful?

Where do I send a check?

The larvae of these flies contain many proteins and other nutritious compounds, so the immature insects are increasingly being raised for animal feed and to consume wastes. However, the adults have a short life span after their breeding days are over and are then discarded. At Tomberlin's suggestion, those adult carcasses became the new starting material for Wooley's team. "We're taking something that's quite literally garbage and making something useful out of it," says Cassidy Tibbetts, a graduate student working on the project in Wooley's lab at Texas A&M University

Apparently the key component used is chitin, which can be found in the exoskeleton of crustaceans and insects. Although shrimp and crab shells are already used to as a chitin source for similar applications, it seems like flies are simply the best when it comes to making plastic

She says her fly-sourced chitin powder is probably purer, since it lacks the yellowish color and clumpy texture of the traditional product

Not to mention foodallergies...lmao 😂

chitin from flies could avoid possible concerns over some seafood allergies

The final goal? Recycle the plastic even faster when it reaches waste status by feeding it to...flies 😂 The circle of life, so beautiful 🤩

Ultimately, we'd like the insects to eat the waste plastic as their food source, and then we would harvest them again and collect their components to make new plastics," she says. "So the insects would not only be the source, but they would also then consume the discarded plastics."

The press release is an interesting read, you can click here if you want to read it in full.

Anyways, cool concept. But will probably go nowhere, like many other cool ideas. Theory is good but mainstream application works a bit differently.

But hey who knows. Maybe flies can be a viable option for reducing "regular" plastic waste 🤔