How a Billion Cockroaches Are Helping China Process Food Waste

Food Fright We’ve written before about reducing food waste in creative ways , and it’s hard to imagine something more outside-the-box than what’s happening in China right now. According to a new Reuters report , a plant just outside the Chinese city of Jinan receives 55 tons of kitchen waste daily — and then disposes of it by feeding it to a billion cockroaches. Taste the Waste We waste approximately one-third of the food produced for human consumption every year — that’s roughly 1.43 billion tons — which is bad for our environment and our economy . As China’s cities grow, they’re having trouble fitting all the food waste into landfills. The cockroach-feeding plant, which is run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology, is helping Jinan address this issue by simply feeding some of the food waste produced by its population of seven million through tubes that lead to cells full of cockroaches. These cockroaches aren’t just helping address the food waste problem, either. They’re also helping address a food problem — for animals, anyways. After they die, the waste-gobbling roaches become food for livestock. As Shandong Qiaobin chairwoman Li Hongyi told Reuters , “It’s like turning trash into resources.” […]

Click here to view original web page at How a Billion Cockroaches Are Helping China Process Food Waste