A Biodegradation process on plastic LDPE using wax moth larvae (Galleria mellonella) with the effect of temperature differences

Abstract

Plastic waste takes years to decompose naturally in nature depending on the plastic polymer. One way to overcome this problem is by biodegradation. Biodegradation in this study used wax moth larvae (Galleria mellonella) with temperature variations of 16˚C (cold room air-conditioned), 23.4˚C (room temperature), 37˚C (incubator) on LDPE plastic samples. This study used a quantitative method with 7 repetitions for each treatment. The results showed that the larvae of Galleria mellonella were able to degrade LDPE type plastics with an average percentage of plastic weight loss at 16 ° C, 23.4 ° C and 37 ° C of 0%, 0.5417% and 0.3613%. The research data was statistically tested using One Way ANOVA and it was found that the sig value was 0.000 <0.05, then further analyzed using the Post Hok Duncan test and the results were significantly different between treatments, so from this it can be concluded that the temperature 23.4 C room becomes the optimum incubation temperature for Galleria mellonella larvae to degrade LDPE plastic waste.