An Overview of the Use of Insects in Reducing Plastic Waste

Billions of tons of plastic waste reveal the need to pay more attention to this environmental challenge. The inefficiencies and complications of existing methods make the use of new methods inevitable. Insects with a life history of hundreds of millions of years, have established good coexistence with a variety of microorganisms during their evolutionary process and have become able to decompose a variety of hydrocarbon polymers similar to today's plastics. Beetles, moths and crickets are the most important orders of insects that have plastic-eating species. They can feed on common plastics such as polyethylene, polystyrene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride and polyurethane and convert them into valuable biomass. Barley beetles, yellow flour beetles, and wax moths can respectively feed on polyethylene by 4.3, 1.7, and 5.9 mg/g of their live weight per day without complementary foods. This amount for rice moth larvae is 42 mg per day. The two-spotted crickets are the only insects capable of degrading polyurethane at a rate of 0.28 mg per day. In this paper, the efficiency of superior species and their usefulness has been discussed.