We should look upon cockroaches kindly.
On the outskirts of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province in China, these insects represent a novel form of urban waste disposal.
[I know I have blogged about this topic before – it was published on May 01, 2018 – but it is worth repeating because this is an eco-friendly practice that we should adopt).
[I know I have blogged about this topic before – it was published on May 01, 2018 – but it is worth repeating because this is an eco-friendly practice that we should adopt).
Here, the roaches are being fed with 50 tonnes of kitchen waste daily – the equivalent in weight to seven adult elephants.
In the near pitch-dark, you can hear them before you see them – an army of cockroaches scuttling and fluttering across stacks of wooden boards as they devour food scraps by the tonne.
The air is warm and humid – just as these roaches like it – and this ensures the colonies keep their health and voracious appetites.
The waste arrives before daybreak at the plant run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co, where it is fed through pipes to cockroaches in their cells.
Shandong Qiaobin plan to establish three more such plants next year – they’re setting their sights on processing a third of the kitchen waste produced by Jinan, home to about seven million people.
Expanding Chinese cities are generating more food waste than they can accommodate in landfills. Therefore, cockroaches could be a way to get rid of mountains of food scraps – and when these gluttonous bugs eventually die, they become nutritious food for livestock.
Besides, a nationwide ban on using food waste as pig feed due to African swine fever outbreaks is also facilitating the growth of the roach industry.
If cockroaches can fix China’s food waste problem – why can’t we consider this for Malaysia too?
On Wednesday, I was at the UNIPAC Engineering office at Jalan Jurubina U1/18, Hicom-Glenmarie Industrial Park in Shah Alam, Selangor.
I was voted Best Project Speaker.
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