Life

Bug business: Cockroaches corralled by the millions in China to crunch waste

December 10, 2018
A staff member shows cockroaches in shelves to the camera at a farm operated by pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor in Xichang, Sichuan province, China, in this Aug. 10, 2018, file photo. — Reuters
A staff member shows cockroaches in shelves to the camera at a farm operated by pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor in Xichang, Sichuan province, China, in this Aug. 10, 2018, file photo. — Reuters

JINAN, China — In the near pitch-dark, you can hear them before you see them — millions of cockroaches scuttling and fluttering across stacks of wooden boards as they devour food scraps by the tonne in a novel form of urban waste disposal.

The air is warm and humid — just as cockroaches like it — to ensure the colonies keep their health and voracious appetites.

Expanding Chinese cities are generating more food waste than they can accommodate in landfills, and cockroaches could be a way to get rid of hills of food scraps, providing nutritious food for livestock when the bugs eventually die and, some say, cures for stomach illness and beauty treatments.

On the outskirts of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province, a billion cockroaches are being fed with 50 tonnes of kitchen waste a day — the equivalent in weight to seven adult elephants.

The waste arrives before daybreak at the plant run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co, where it is fed through pipes to cockroaches in their cells.

Shandong Qiaobin plans to set up three more such plants next year, aiming to process a third of the kitchen waste produced by Jinan, home to about seven million people. — Reuters


December 10, 2018
170 views
HIGHLIGHTS
Life
day ago

Titanic 'door' prop that kept Rose alive sells for $718,750

Life
day ago

Half of women in music experience discrimination, report finds

Life
8 days ago

Scientists say they can cut HIV out of cells