A Study on the Utilization of the Earthworms Eisenia fetida and Eisenia andrei for the Disposal of Polymers

Abstract

Disposing plastics has been an incredibly arduous task. Many of the plastics that people use take tens of hundreds of years to decompose. Yet, plastic usage increases year by year. Plastics have actually become a part of people’s lives, from water bottles to the exterior of televisions. To eliminate the usage of plastics would be impossible. Therefore, methods for effectively disposing plastics are necessary. However, the existing models are rather too inefficient or are too expensive. To incinerate plastics would be environmentally harmful, while to implement high level technology would not be popular when it comes to expenses. Therefore, we planned to propose a solution that would consider both cost and efficiency. We decided to use earthworms since they not only best satisfied our standards, but also are able to eat a variety of materials, including organic materials, inorganic materials, and various wastes. Under this basis, we placed five different powders of the polymers Polyethylene, Polymer Nylon, Polypropylene, Ethylene vinyl acetate, and Linear low-density polyethylene into the soil, and used two different types of earthworms (Eisenia fetida and Eisenia andrei). With our experiment set, we carefully observed the activity of the earthworms and the change in mass of each polymer. Index