Creepy crawlies eat away food waste

Korea’s Rural Development Administration has announced that it has laid the groundwork for handling large amounts of food waste using soldier fly larvae.

Soldier fly larvae have a voracious appetite, which allows them to be used for disposing a range of waste products. They can eat and break down about 2 to 3 grams of food waste each, and their byproducts can be used as both as a fertilizer for agriculture, and an excellent source of sustainable protein for animal feed. For instance, feeding 100 tons of food waste to larvae can produce 10 tons of feed.

Previously, industrialization of this process was difficult due to the lack of inspection standards for food storage and soldier fly breeding facilities that could dispose of food waste in large quantities, being limited to no more than 100kg a day, but the Ministry of Agriculture and Welfare announced last October that these issues have largely been solved.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry predicts that by laying the foundation for handling food waste using insects, they can anticipate 15 billion won (~$14 million) in sales this year for disposing large amounts of food waste, and producing larvae for feed purposes.