Chapter 12 - Using black soldier fly for waste management in developing countries

Abstract

Ever since the inception of humans on the earth, the population has never stopped increasing. With the increase in population, the human societal system took many twists and turns, with modernization being an essential requisite to most countries. Therefore, with this change in lifestyle patterns and population boom, solid waste generation was an inevitable anthropogenic activity. Until the last few decades, the world could never imagine solid waste would become such a severe threat, and unmanaged landfills would be a significant contributor to greenhouse gas leading to climate change. Although solid waste management is a high priority sector today, many countries find it challenging to address this issue through a sustainable and practical approach. One of the major roadblocks is the unsegregated nature of solid waste, making it unsuitable for most available waste treatment technology. The problem increases manifold when the unsegregated solid waste contains higher moisture and organic content and has low calorific value. Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) have recently been identified as effective agents for treating organic waste. The present study explores the potential of BSFL in decomposing the organic fraction from five different unsegregated municipal solid waste (MSW) compositions. BSFL successfully degraded and converted the compostable fraction from the unsegregated MSW into its biomass. BSF prepupae’s final weight varied between 158 and 241 mg/larvae for the five different MSW compositions. The protein content of the obtained BSF prepupae ranged between 26% and 31% on a dry weight basis. The chapter explains the kinetics of waste decomposition using BSFL, segregation of various fractions of MSW after treatment, and the revenue generation aspect of the proposed treatment technology. The present study is the first ever study on the application of BSFL as an agent for the treatment of unsegregated MSW.