Should we be letting flies eat our food waste?

Most people are inclined to hunt food, and the thought of maggots in your bins is sufficient to turn the stomach of anyone.

But a handful of municipal councils have embraced the maggots – more officially known as the larvae of flies – and their taste for rotten food.

In Vilnius, capital of the Baltic State of Lithuania, the larvae of flies were officially treated the 2,700 tonnes of food waste that the 607,000 residents of the city put for the collection each year, alongside that of the six neighboring councils.

Energesman, the waste management company that began to relieve Vilnius from its food waste earlier this year, does not really charge the city for this service.

This saves the city of the city up to 2 million euros (1.7 million pounds sterling; $ 2.3 million) per year, based on a target of treatment of 12,000 tonnes in 2026, said that the director general of the company, Algirda Blazgys.

Energesman has deployed new bags of orange food waste to residents, alongside an influence marketing campaign to encourage more vilniečiai to separate their food waste, because the 2,700 tonnes collected are only a fraction of the 40,000 tonnes of household waste that the city is supposed to generate.

Last year, it became compulsory for advice to collect food waste, so that the city must find ways to cope with it.

Energesman, on the other hand, plans to transform the larvae of flies fatte into a new flow of income.

It houses around six million flies in a special area in its Vilnius factory, which mate every six hours, according to CEO Algirdas Blazgys.

A female fly can lay around 500 eggs during its average lifespan of 21 days, so Mr. Blazgys and his business team at more than three million larvae per month, which can consume more than 11 tonnes of food waste in the first most hungry days of their lives.

It is the enormous appetites of these tiny creatures who make them candidates so excellent for the transformation of food waste. This study shows a swarm to demolish a 16 -inch pizza in just two hours.

The trick is to reduce them before turning into mature flies. In this way, the larvae of protein -rich flies can be converted into protein products to be used in animal feed or industrial use, for example as ingredient in paint, glue, lamp shades and furniture covers.

In addition, their manure, known as the striking, can be used as fertilizers.

Energesman has already implemented supply tests with partners in the painting, glue and furniture industries, but Mr. Blazgys admits that it turns out to be more complicated than he had planned.

The sample paint produced using larvae of flies raised by Energesman did not completely go out in the right color, but the shades of lamps created are promising.

It also has university partnerships in place to provide flies of flies for research purposes and to feed bacteria. And of course, the larvae are in demand from the local fishing industry to be used as bait.

But EU health and safety regulations mean that flies of flies nourished with kitchen waste cannot be used in edible insect products for human consumption, as there could be cross -contamination of meat and fish remains.

“We found crazy ideas, then we started looking for other people who could also come with crazy ideas about what we could do,” explains Mr. Blazgys.

“As it is still very new, some people always seek to see if we are going to fail, so they don’t want to boast about it yet. But I think we are going to find something good.”

Although there are many cases in the world of flies of flies used in food waste management and harvesting as a protein ingredient, it is largely on a commercial basis, for example, a private contract between a hotel or a building owner and a back of flies.

In Kenya, the Mila project is a social company using larvae of flies to tackle the problem of food waste from Mombasa, while providing strikes as fertilizers to local farmers.

However, there is only one handful of municipal councils that have adopted this way of treating food waste.

Geterra in Australia used flies to help Sydney overcome its food waste, as part of a limited test that started this year.

Over the past three years, Goterra has also worked with three cantons that are part of the neighboring Queanbeyan-Palerang regional council, recycling about 10 tonnes of food waste.

The question of whether we will see the British advice start to send in millions of flies, so that their larvae can nibble on the 6.4 million tonnes of household food produced by each year, is only a matter of time.

It is the optimistic vision of Larry Kotch. It is the CEO and co-founder of the Flybox waste management insect company, which, according to him, operates more insect waste treatment sites than any other company in the United Kingdom, working largely with private products manufacturers and supermarkets.

Flybox is also a founding member of the INSECT Bioconversion Association, an industry organization representing companies in space.

British councils are interested, estimates Mr. Kotch, in particular because the weekly collections of household food waste will become compulsory in England from March 2026.

About 148 of the 317 local authorities in England still do not offer it, according to the recycling advisory committee for local authorities.

But the regulations established by the Environment Department, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) are currently preventing advice from using flies to treat food waste.

If the regulations could align with science, Mr. Kotch maintains that “the United Kingdom could see its first insect factory contracted by the Council in two years”.

“Unfortunately, with the government, it is always safer to say no … all those we have spoken in British advice are very enthusiastic about insect proteins and prefer to work with insect farms than alternative technologies.”

Defra has confirmed to the BBC that animal by-products regulations prevent insects from being used to treat organic waste flows.

He indicates that it is not currently planned to examine these regulations. “Our waste management regulations play a crucial role in protecting the United Kingdom’s biosecurity and reducing the risk of illness,” said the spokesperson.

The current alternative for sending food waste to discharge is anaerobic digestion (AD), a process of breakdown that creates biogas.

However, Mr. Kotch says that current advertising factories are not sufficient to deal with the planned influx of household food waste.

“Globally, more than 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted each year. We believe that up to 40% of this could be recycled using insect waste management. And not only this avoids elimination costs and methane emissions, but it also produces precious proteins and organic fertilizers”, explains Mr. Kotch.

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