Termites Can Help Dispose Of Environmentally Unfriendly Plastics
Modern humans have produced a whole lot of trash, and not all of this trash will wind up in landfills. Much of our trash will wind up the in the sea. Our oceans currently contain trash piles that are as large as small islands. Some people may think that this overabundance of trash is not a big deal. After all, everything decomposes at some point.
Of course nothing lasts forever, and this includes our trash. But the problem is that some of the things we throw out everyday will take a very long time to degrade. For example, many plastic objects that do not degrade quickly will wind up in our trash, mainly plastic shopping bags. However, researchers may have found a solution to this problem, and it involves termites.
A Ugandan researcher from Makerere University in Kampala, Chris Kasamba, stumbled upon soldier termites eating away at plastic bags that he was using to hold seedlings during a camping trip. The plastic bags are technically polythene bags, and Kasamba’s observation made him curious. Kasamba set up an experiment to determine whether or not termites could benefit the environment by consuming polythene bags. Kasamba learned that Macrotermes herus termites were responsible for consuming the bags that he used during his trip. Kasamba soon demonstrated that the herus termites could indeed consume polythene material.
Despite Kasamba’s findings, more research is needed before termites are used as an environmentally friendly way of reducing the amount of polythene waste in the world. Kasamba was not able to determine whether the herus termites digested the polythene or simply brought the material back to nesting areas to be used for nest building.
Many termites, the herus included, appear to consume wood, but they actually bring wood back to their nests for fungi to digest. The fungi then break the wood down into simpler carbohydrates that can be consumed. The termites observed in the study may be doing the same thing with polythene plastic. Many researchers are nevertheless excited about the potential environmental benefits that these termites may bring to humanity.
Do you believe that termites could offer humanity more environmental benefits than are currently understood?
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