This Chinese city is feeding garbage to a billion cockroaches to combat waste
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 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.
A nationwide ban on using food waste as pig feed due to African swine fever outbreaks is also spurring the growth of the cockroach industry.
"Cockroaches are a bio-technological pathway for the converting and processing of kitchen waste," said Liu Yusheng, president of Shandong Insect Industry Association.
Cockroaches are also a good source of protein for pigs and other livestock. "It's like turning trash into resources," said Shandong Qiaobin chairwoman Li Hongyi.
中国、山東省のとある街にはゴキブリ養殖場があり、５０トンにも及ぶ食料廃棄物をゴキブリに与えている。この大量に養殖されたゴキブリはどのように使用されるかというと、家畜のための餌にしたり、さらには腹痛に効く漢方薬の原料などとしても使用されるとのこと。
食料廃棄物を効率的に資源へと変えてくれる存在としてゴキブリはかなり有用だそうで、この養殖場を運営している会社はさらにこのようなゴキブリ養殖場を増やすことを計画しているとのこと。
下の映像は、そんなゴキブリ養殖場の内部に入った映像。かなりグロテスクなので閲覧注意です。