Imagine using insects as a source of chemicals to make plastics that can biodegrade later—with the help of that very same type of bug. That concept is closer to reality than you might expect. Researchers describe their progress to date, including isolation and purification of insect-derived chemicals and their conversion into functional bioplastics, at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
“For 20 years, my group has been developing methods to transform natural products—such as glucose obtained from sugar cane or trees—into degradable, digestible polymers that don’t persist in the environment,” says Karen Wooley, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator. “But those natural products are harvested from resources that are also used for food, fuel, construction and transportation.”
So Wooley began searching for alternative sources that wouldn’t have these competing applications. Her colleague Jeffery Tomberlin, Ph.D., suggested she could use waste products left over from farming black soldier flies, an expanding industry that he has been helping to develop.
The larvae of these flies contain many proteins and other nutritious compounds, so the immature insects are increasingly being raised for animal