Posted on 09/11/2020 5:06:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The insects eat leftovers that would otherwise sit in landfills, emitting carbon pollution.
Most people would look at a mass of writhing maggots and see a scene that belongs in a horror movie. But Jason Drew sees opportunity.
Drew is CEO of the Insect Technology Group, which farms fly larvae at a factory in South Africa.
“The fly has an incredible future in helping us solve some of our problems,” he says.
For example, fly larvae can eat food waste that would otherwise sit in landfills, emitting carbon pollution. At Drew’s factory, the maggots munch on leftovers from restaurants and supermarkets.
“The larvae grow by eating that waste. That’s their natural food,” he says. “What they leave behind is compost. We separate out the little wriggly larvae from the compost, and we process those larvae into oil and into protein, and we supply that to fish farms and chicken farms predominantly in Asia.”
That helps solve another problem: Fish and poultry farms often feed their animals fishmeal, which is made from wild-caught fish.
“We need to find ways of feeding those animals without imposing further on our natural ecosystems,” Drew says.
The maggot meal provides a new source of protein. So while farming fly larvae may sound gross, the approach is buzzing with potential.
Nick did the mood just strike you to Google “maggots”?
Lol. I’ve always been fascinated by how some of God’s creatures are more advanced than the most advanced technology we’ve created.
In medicine, they use maggots to clean wounds.
Big news day for maggots.
I went to the site but saw no maggots. I’m heartbroken!
Green bottle flies, I believe.
They make an incredible antiseptic and they eat only the dead flesh.
Thank you for reminding me.
I’ve got maggots in my back yard, in my compost bin
At Parris Island they come in as maggots and leave as Marines!
Same thing happened to me when I forgot to throw out some rotting bananas, but does Yale write about my trash can? Nooooooo.
Those are democrat maggots I am betting.
Free food and someone else pays and brings it to them and they leave a hell of a mess and never even say thank you to the system that feeds them.
Maybe they should.
Plastic garbage bags came into vogue to cut down on the fly problem.
Since the carbon is taken in by the maggots, when they turn into flies, then die don’t they emit the same or more carbon?
I don’t think they turn into flies since they’re feeding them to fish.
The short answer is “yes”. The food the maggots ingest will eventually lose all its carbon as CO2. And then the food plants will grab it out of the air and sequester it again. It’s the “carbon cycle, and it is almost as old as life. By the way, during the Carboniferous era there was a lot more vegetation, almost no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and of course because of that the Earth was ... very warm all the way up to the poles.
Maggots munching on food waste? Pffttt! I work in a hospital ER. I’ve seen them munching on people-live people.
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