Cleaning plastic waste from food remains at ecol Trade. (source: TASR)
A Slovak start-up is helping a major retail chain in Slovakia go greener - by using insect larvae.
Nitra-based Ecol Trade's system using maggots to clean plastic packaging and foil from the remains of food waste is being used at Kaufland stores across Slovakia, allowing the chain to recover up to 94 percent of its own waste on average. The average sorting rate in companies is 60 percent, but drops to 49 percent in households.
Ecol Trade, whose business focuses on the collection and disposal of biodegradable waste, is awaiting approval of its application for a European patent for the technology behind the system.
“First we started working on a project to decompose bio-waste using black fly larvae and then we looked for ways the larvae could also clean plastic from food waste to then be recycled,” said Roman Briatka, waste management manager at Kaufland Slovakia, as cited by the TASR newswire.
Gabriel Čuka of Kaufland Slovakia said it was possible to clean and recover more than 1,500 tonnes of plastic waste per year from Kaufland’s 79 stores in the country and that it had invested €600,000 in the zero-waste project.
Harnessing nature to clean plastic waste
The larvae of the black fly, which is native to Indochina, live in the wild as herbivores, the founder of ecol Trade and molecular biologist Eduard Kolesár explained. They have an absorbent tract and can suck and lick up food which is beginning to decompose and is contaminated by plastic packaging, including rotting meat and blood residue.
Kaufland takes contaminated plastic waste to ecol Trade four times a week for cleaning by larvae.
“The plastics are dry and odourless after cleaning by the larvae,” said Kolesár. He also pointed out that this saves water, chemicals and does not pollute waterways.
Ecol Trade is expecting approval of the patent for the technology behind the cleaning system from the European Patent Office at some point this year.
