Mary Lempres and Charlotte Bohning of American design studio, Doppelgänger have developed a Styrofoam substitute made from plastic-eating mealworms.
Expanded polystyrene (EPS), also known as Styrofoam, fill up to 30 per cent of landfill space worldwide. The toxic material is commonly used for insulation, packaging, and food containers such as egg cartons, cups, disposable trays and plates. It cannot be recycled after its end of life and just cracks into microplastics, polluting the planet permanently.
The EPS substitute, dubbed Chitofoam, is a bioplastic foam made from the exoskeleton of mealworms and can biodegrade in soil within two weeks.
