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Scientists in Kenya team up with mealworms to help solve the plastic problem in Africa

An insect solution for pollution?

Photo credit: Canva

Plastic pollution is a huge global issue.

A scientific discovery could potentially be a breakthrough for Africa’s landfills. Scientists have discovered that a Kenyan mealworm species has the ability to eat and digest polystyrene—better known to most of us as styrofoam.

Researchers at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology conducted a month-long study that found that the stomach bacteria within the larvae of Alphitobius darkling beetles can adapt their enzymes to break down styrofoam. These mealworms not only can digest it, but seem to grow an appetite for the plastic, too. While they cannot get their fullest nutrition on styrofoam alone, the mealworms were able to ingest hydrogen and carbon from it through digestion. These mealworms are commonly found as pests in chicken coops and poultry production facilities, so there’s no worry of a worm shortage.

Styrofoam is widely used for food containers, shipping materials, insulation, electronics, and many other products. While it is incredibly useful, it’s also piling up in our landfills since there is no way for it to degrade or decompose naturally like organic garbage and other material. Properly recycling styrofoam also has its drawbacks, as it is expensive to process and produces other pollutants.

While these plastics are a problem globally, they’re especially an issue in Africa. The region is predicted to amass 116 million tonnes of plastic waste by 2060. According to the charity Tearfund, enough plastic waste to cover a soccer field is tossed or burned in sub-Saharan Africa every minute. It’s theorized that this Kenyan mealworm’s adaptation was due to the amount of styrofoam that has invaded their local environments. The hope is that this discovery can help its native continent first then possibly expand application worldwide.

Now before you think that the solution is to just have millions of these mealworms unleashed into landfills to feast on our trash, the scientists involved are continuing their research. One of the next steps is to study the bacteria in the hope to obtain, recreate, and distribute the bacteria and enzymes on their own. They also plan on trying to see if these mealworms could digest other plastics and, if so, if they can remain healthy. Should the positive momentum continue, this wouldn’t just help the environment in Africa but could provide global applications in how we dispose of our plastic trash.

Science is a funny thing. We like to champion it yet underestimate it at the same time. Federal funding for scientific research is at historic lows and the average American seems skeptical towards scientific studies in general. Understandably, many everyday people would think less about studying bugs since there’s no apparent human benefit or application towards larger issues compared to those studying how to make various rockets, vehicles, or other technology. Yet now it seems like studying something very small and insignificant like a mealworm could help preserve our planet in the long term.

It’s the perfect example of how investment, patience, and study could lead to surprising solutions that never would’ve been considered otherwise, even if it seems unimportant on the surface. On top of that, it shows how every living thing plays a role in our Earth’s preservation. Even tiny, squiggly mealworms.

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Amazing WaterCube invention can create up to 100 gallons of water a day out of thin air

Say goodbye to your water bills.

via Genesis Systems and Karolina Grabowska/Pexels

Genesis Systems' WaterCube.

A seriously impressive piece of technology grabbed a lot of attention at this year's CES trade show convention in Las Vegas, Genesis Systems’ WaterCube. It’s a home and office appliance that’s about the size of an A/C unit and can produce up to 100 gallons of water daily from thin air. That’s the amount of water used by a typical family of 4.

The amount of water it can produce depends on the humidity levels, but Genesis Systems says it can even create water in dry environments.

Much like solar panels provide energy independence, this does the same for water.

"Our first mission is to sustainably solve global water scarcity," said David Stuckenberg, who founded Genesis with his wife, Shannon, told Techxplore. "Once you have this plugged into your house...you can turn yourself off (from) the city water."

"One of the challenges that we're facing, in terms of making humanity sustainable, is the stuff we need for life," he said, according to Techxplore. "Next to air, water is the most important thing."

The WC-100 WaterCube stands more than 3 feet tall, weighs close to 600 pounds and will cost around $20,000 to pre-order. So, even though you may not have a water bill anymore, you will have a pretty expensive monthly payment plan on a WaterCube for a few years.

But once it’s paid off, your water is free as long as you own the appliance.

Genesis Systems believes that the WaterCube creates “an infinite water source” that is “democratizing the water supply.”


This article originally appeared on 1.28.24

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Scientists tested 3 popular bottled water brands for nanoplastics using new tech, and yikes

The results were alarming—an average of 240,000 nanoplastics per 1 liter bottle—but what does it mean for our health?

Suzy Hazelwood/Canva

Columbia University researchers tested bottled water for nanoplastics and found hundreds of thousands of them.

Evian, Fiji, Voss, SmartWater, Aquafina, Dasani—it's impressive how many brands we have for something humans have been consuming for millennia. Despite years of studies showing that bottled water is no safer to drink than tap water, Americans are more consuming more bottled water than ever, to the tune of billions of dollars in bottled water sales.

People cite convenience and taste in addition to perceived safety for reasons they prefer bottle to tap, but the fear factor surrounding tap water is still a driving force. It doesn't help when emergencies like floods cause tap water contamination or when investigations reveal issues with lead pipes in some communities, but municipal water supplies are tested regularly, and in the vast majority of the U.S., you can safely grab a glass of water from a tap.

And now, a new study on nanoplastics found in three popular bottled water brands is throwing more data into the bottled vs. tap water choice

Researchers from Columbia University used a new laser-guided technology to detect nanoplastics that had previously evaded detection due to their miniscule size.

The new technology can detect, count and analyze and chemical structure of nanoparticles, and they found seven different major types of plastic: polyamide, polypropylene, polyethylene, polymethyl methacrylate, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, and polyethylene terephthalate.

In contrast to a 2018 study that found around 300 plastic particles in an average liter of bottled water, the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January of 2024 found 240,000 nanoplastic particles per liter bottle on average between the three brands studied. (The name of the brands were not indicated in the study.)

As opposed to microplastics, nanoplastics are too small to be seen by microscope. Their size is exactly why experts are concerned about them, as they are small enough to invade human cells and potentially disrupt cellular processes.

“Micro and nanoplastics have been found in the human placenta at this point. They’ve been found in human lung tissues. They’ve been found in human feces; they’ve been found in human blood,” study coauthor Phoebe Stapleton, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Rutgers University’s Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy told CNN Health,

We know that nanoplastics are making their way into our bodies. We just don't have enough research yet on what that means for our health, and we still have more questions than answers. How many nanoplastics does it take to do damage and/or cause disease? What kinds of damage or disease might they cause? Is whatever effect they might have cumulative? We simply don't have answers to these questions yet.

That's not to say there's no cause for concern.

We do know that certain levels of microplastic exposure have been shown to adversely affect the viability of cells. Nanoplastics are even smaller—does that mean they are more likely to cause cellular damage? Science is still working that out.

According to Dr. Sara Benedé of the Spanish National Research Council’s Institute of Food Science Research, it's not just the plastics themselves that might cause damage, but what they may bring along with them. “[Microparticles and nanoparticles] have the ability to bind all kinds of compounds when they come into contact with fluids, thus acting as carriers of all kinds of substances including environmental pollutants, toxins, antibiotics, or microorganisms,” Dr. Benedé told Medical News Today.

water plastic bottle on seashorePhoto by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash

Where is this plastic in water coming from?

This study focused on bottled water, which is almost always packaged in plastic. The filters used to filter the water before bottling are also frequently made from plastic.

Is it possible that some of these nanoplastics were already present in the water from their original sources? Again, research is always evolving on this front, but microplastics have been detected in lakes, streams and other freshwater sources, so it's not a big stretch to imagine that nanoplastics may be making their way into freshwater ecosystems as well. However, microplastics are found at much higher levels in bottled water than tap water, so it's also not a stretch to assume that most of the nanoplastics are likely coming from the bottling process and packaging rather than from freshwater sources.

assorted bottled waters on shelfPhoto by Giuseppe Famiani on Unsplash

The reality is, though, we simply don't know yet.

“Based on other studies we expected most of the microplastics in bottled water would come from leakage of the plastic bottle itself, which is typically made of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic,” lead author Naixin Qian, a doctoral student in chemistry at Columbia University, told CNN Health. “However, we found there’s actually many diverse types of plastics in a bottle of water, and that different plastic types have different size distributions. The PET particles were larger, while others were down to 200 nanometers, which is much, much smaller.”

We need to drink water, and we need to drink safe water. At this point, we have plenty of environmental reasons for avoiding bottled water unless absolutely necessary and opting for tap water instead. Even if there's still more research to be done, the presence of hundreds of thousands of nanoplastics in bottled water might just be another reason to make the switch.


This article originally appeared on 2.2.24

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Jimmy Carter built a solar farm in his hometown and it now powers half of the entire city

That's the equivalent of burning about 3,600 tons of coal.

via Sol America

Jimmy Carter of Plains, Georgia

Jimmy Carter was way ahead of the rest of America when he put solar panels on the White House. On June 20, 1979, he made a proud proclamation:

In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.

The 32-panel system was designed to heat water throughout the presidential residence.



"President Carter saw [solar] as a really valid energy resource, and he understood it. I mean, it is a domestic resource and it is huge," Fred Morse, director of Carter's solar energy program, told Scientific American.

"President Carter saw [solar] as a really valid energy resource, and he understood it. I mean, it is a domestic resource and it is huge," Fred Morse, director of Carter's solar energy program, told Scientific American.

"It was the symbolism of the president wanting to bring solar energy immediately into his administration," he continued. Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan, who was no fan of alternative energy took the panels down form the White House when he took office a few years later.

via Popular Science / Twitter

Carter was right about two things he said in that dedication. First, his panels are currently on display at The Smithsonian Institute, the Carter Library, and the Solar Science and Technology Museum in Dezhou, China.

Second, renewable energy has become one of the most important American endeavors of the new millennium.

There's no doubt that President Carter was way ahead of his time.

Carter has always been a man of action, evidenced by his hands-on approach to building homes with Habitat for Humanity. So in 2017, he leased ten acres of land near his home in Plains, Georgia, to be used as a solar farm with 3,852 panels.

The 94-year-old Carter still lives in his hometown of Plains with his wife in a two-bedroom home that's assessed at about $167,000.

Three years after going live, Carter's solar farm now provides 50% of the small town's electricity needs, generating 1.3 MW of power per year. That's the equivalent of burning about 3,600 tons of coal.

via SolAmerica

The system is state-of-the-art with panels that turn towards the sun throughout the day so they generate the maximum amount of power.

"Distributed, clean energy generation is critical to meeting growing energy needs around the world while fighting the effects of climate change," Carter said in a SolAmerica press release. "I am encouraged by the tremendous progress that solar and other clean energy solutions have made in recent years and expect those trends to continue."

"There remains a great deal of untapped potential in renewable energy in Georgia and elsewhere in the U.S. We believe distributed solar projects like the Plains project will play a big role in fueling the energy needs of generations to come," SolAmerica executive vice president George Mori said in a statement.

This story originally appeared on 02.18.20

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