Black soldier fly larvae can chew through polyurethane foam and actually put on weight doing it, according to a study published in Environmental Entomology.
Polyurethane is one of the trickiest plastics to recycle. It shows up in couch cushions, foam padding, and shipping materials, and its tough molecular bonds mean it can sit in a landfill for centuries, leaking toxic substances into the surrounding soil and water.
A team at Henan University of Technology in China decided to test whether these larvae, already famous for gobbling up kitchen scraps and animal waste, could handle this stubborn material.
It split the larvae into groups, giving some regular feed, others water-dampened polyurethane foam, and the rest just water.
Across a 16-day trial, the plastic-fed larvae ate roughly one-tenth of the foam they were given. Each one consumed about 0.35 milligrams of plastic daily and added 19 milligrams of body weight across the full period. Larvae eating standard feed gained 96 milligrams, and those with nothing to eat consistently lost weight.
A thriving population of bacteria inside the larvae's digestive tract adapted to the low-nutrient plastic diet and produced enzymes capable of snapping apart the bonds in polyurethane. The study's authors isolated a single bacterial strain, Delftia sp. A2, that could eat through powdered polyurethane on its own.
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"We found that black soldier fly larvae could survive and gain weight with the polyurethane as the sole substrate, and polyurethane consumption influenced gut microbial community," said Xifeng Wang, Ph.D., the study's first author.
This find could open up new paths for dealing with plastic waste that currently has nowhere to go.
If scientists can identify and scale up the right enzymes, you might eventually see biological recycling systems that break down plastics your curbside bin can't handle.
That means less plastic piling up in landfills, fewer toxic chemicals seeping into the ground near your community, and potential savings on waste disposal costs down the line.
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