Our Solutions

Greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in our atmosphere when food waste is dumped in landfills where conditions lead to methane release, while plastic continues to accumulate on land and water where it degrades into microplastics and other substances that harm human health and the environment. Biodiversity collapses in the face of such threats, along with the habitat destruction that continues in our quest for resources and ever-increasing agricultural production.

But... we only have one planet. Populations rise, but the land area is not growing any bigger. Our continued contamination of the natural world for short-sighted profit must be stopped if we want to ensure our long-term survival. While scenes like the roadside above can seem like a hopeless and insurmountable tragedy, we have found a way to mitigate some of the most common and pervasive forms of waste. We have discovered a scalable and effective means to transform food and plastic waste into valuable commodities that trap carbon, provide new income streams, and improve both agricultural landscapes and natural areas that are recovering from previous devastation. It's time to get creative.

With a name like Bug Abonos, you must have guessed that insects are at the center of our operations. As highlighted by Samsung's "Together for Tomorrow! Enabling People" promotional campaign at the 2024 Paris Olympics, "Bugs Can Save the Planet."

Two species that demonstrate the greatest potential at bioremediation are Hermetia illucens, a.k.a. the black soldier fly (pictured above), and Tenebrio molitor, or the yellow mealworm. We have also been experimenting with Alphitobius diaperinus, also known as the lesser mealworm, which has not been studied as extensively within the scientific literature yet appears to have a lot of potential.

In mixed waste, as can be seen at the top of this page--or in almost every garbage can that is designated for plastics or organic waste because the two are carelessly tossed together--challenges to sorting and separating the materials can be overwhelming. Such trash is generally tossed into landfills and forgotten, because the cost associated with separation and reprocessing can be too great.

Yet what is difficult for humans is natural for insects; they have developed abilities to access resources that might otherwise be considered unreachable. The abilities of mealworms to break down plastics is well-documented, as is the ability of black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) to consume any sort of organic waste. This also appears true for the lesser mealworm, though more study is needed. In the cases that we have tested so far, mealworms and BSFL are able to break down some of the most challenging waste products, adding value by producing oils, proteins, and chitin--a component of the insect exoskeleton that is used for pharmaceuticals, paper production, and agriculture. The excrement that they produce, called frass, is also useful for fertilizer and a soil amendment that helps plants develop resistance to fungal disease.

But what about those insects that eat plastic? Surely they must contain something toxic, right?

At present, our own analyses and those of other researchers demonstrate that insects are able to achieve complete digestion of plastics; they do not bioaccumulate any toxins in their tissues, and they are no different than insects raised on other types of food. Yellow mealworms that had been fed with Styrofoam that was treated with a toxic flame retardant could even be fed to shrimp without any bioaccumulation.

That said, their frass (poop) does contain smaller plastic fragments, but that is essential to the final step of our processing. Plastics consist largely of carbon and hydrogen atoms, and so they can be converted into environmentally-friendly products with the proper treatment. And that treatment is pyrolysis; a process that is very similar to converting wood into charcoal.

The added advantage of using frass for pyrolysis is that it is enriched with nitrogen, an essential nutrient for plants. The carbonized final product can be used to improve soil quality without any hazardous effects. In fact, this pyrolysed carbon is also stable enough to remain as a solid for long periods of time, and so it is an effective means of carbon sequestration. Unlike other methods of plastic disposal--including recycling and incineration--pyrolysis does not produce any hazardous chemicals nor does it cause the release of microplastics. Our methods are the only means to remove both plastic and food waste from the waste stream permanently, and transform them into valuable materials that capture carbon, improve soil quality, and benefit human and environmental health. Everything comes full circle with Bug Abonos; try our products today!