Recent studies revealed that mealworms, waxworms, and certain species of mushrooms have the capability to degrade different types of plastics and at different rates. Extensive literature research and evaluation of scientific articles to further understand how these organisms breakdown plastic, to determining the efficiency of each organism in degrading plastic. These studies are fairly recent but these organisms have been shown to degrade plastic in the lab.

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To observe how mealworms, wax worms, and oyster mushroom breakdown plastic, a sample of each organism was raised on plastic with some of the organisms being raised on their natural substrate as a control. The experimental set up for each organism was based on the material and methods of some peer-reviewed articles such as (Yang, Yu, et al. , Zhang, Junqing, et al.)

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While we are able to observe the ability of these live organisms to breakdown plastic there still more needs to be done to understand the interaction of these organisms with plastic. If given an opportunity to be in a lab some further experimentation can be done to further understand the rate of plastic decomposition by each organism and determining the ideal environment to allow these organisms to efficiently breakdown plastic. In addition, further laboratory analysis needs to be done concerning how plastic consumption can affect the biomass composition of each organism and the output of waste. Possible future experiments include evaluating the consumability of the worms and the fruiting bodies of the mushroom for animals and humans. Another factor that we would like to evaluate is the outcome of using the worm waste and the mycelium from the system as fertilizer.