The worm may turn on plastic waste problem
A common yellow worm native to Shaanxi province may hold the answer of how to deal with the mountains of plastic waste that are clogging up the world's landfills.
Chen Chongguan, 17, noticed that the worms bought to feed to her bird could eat and digest a plastic delivery box. Inspired by her father, a biology teacher, she experimented with the worms by feeding them small amounts of plastic mixed with leaves. Ms Chen discovered that the excrement from the worms - which are smaller than silkworms - did not respond to static electricity, did not burn and did not float.
'The plastic [fed to the worms] has three unusual characteristics: it conducts electricity, it burns and it floats. But the excrement does not have these characteristics, proving that the plastic has been digested,' said Ms Chen, who attends the No 8 Middle School in Xian.
Her conclusions were drawn after 1kg of her worms ate their way through 70 grams of plastic in 30 days. Her research has won several awards at provincial and national level.
Tang Saizhen, director of the China Plastic Reduction Association, said tests had been carried out in the past to see how well worms and insects could break down plastic, and the results were not as promising as those achieved by Ms Chen.
Other scientists in the field expressed scepticism. 'It is very common for insects to eat plastic. Proving that they have actually digested it requires very accurate chemical tests rather than physical tests,' said Liu Fuqiang, from the Environmental Engineering School at Tsinghua University.
'Even if it is proven that the worm contains a material that digests plastic, it would be difficult and costly to extract the material and apply it to waste treatment.'
