while food waste takes over american landfills, traditional composting is unable to keep up with both the quantity and range of foods being thrown out. but deep in the panamanian jungle, one community is using black soldier flies to eliminate food waste of all kinds. watch now to see how meat, dairy, and even bones are rapidly decomposed by these specialized larvae.

the biology department of the kalu yala institute looks a little different from a traditional research lab. bare feet and gym shorts suffice instead of lab coats and goggles. rather than scalpels or x-acto knives, students pick up machetes to make their way through the brush and pluck up specimen samples. and, in place of a classic laboratory space filled with spotless counters and sanitized equipment, the “classroom” consists of open-air wooden ranchos in the heart of panama’s rainforest.

out here among the towering fronds and scurrying iguanas, selah phillips is taking advantage of one of the natural resources that abounds in the humid environment: algae. the 20-year-old plant enthusiast, on a semester abroad at kalu yala from millersville university in pennsylvania, has made it her mission to take the green filaments and turn it into green energy. by extracting oil from the organisms, which grow freely on the rocks in the nearby pacora and iguana rivers, she believes she can produce a source of biodiesel to serve as an alternative to polluting fossil fuels.

“on a global scale, research on biodiesel enables us to deindustrialize, decentralize, and bring more income back to the community,” she says during a presentation for other kalu yala students. “just save our environment in the long term.”

those at kalu yala have taken it upon themselves to create a fully sustainable eco-city that can serve as a model for a more environmentally friendly future. the city in the making also hosts an “institute,” which enrolls students — many of them on a semester abroad from colleges and universities — to work on projects from tiny house architecture to agroforestry. they’re hoping to find solutions to the biggest environmental issues of our time, all in the span of 10 weeks.

phillips and her fellow “kalu yalans,” as they are fond of calling themselves, may miss out on some of the resources and credibility they’d find at a more standard university. but the unique nature of the program gives them unprecedented independence and access to the riches of the surrounding environment, a wellspring of biodiversity that often goes ignored by international researchers and underutilized by a national government that is decreasing its spending on research and development.

this past spring semester, kalu yala’s biology department consisted of three people: two students and program director ryan king, who serves as lecturer, lab adviser, mentor, and everything in between. all of them had come from u.s. universities. and, during their time in the jungle, all had created projects uniquely suited to the setting, which could have real implications for the future of sustainability.

if, that is, they can successfully bring their ideas with them in their return to the “real world.”

fueling the future

for phillips, the social media-savvy kalu yala had been on her online radar long before she ever decided to make the journey there herself. an earlier project to create sustainable ponds for growing tilapia had put the eco-city on her map as a place where innovative environmental work was happening. after following kalu yala’s work for three or four years, phillips said she decided to head to the jungle to see it for herself.

the journey, she said, represented an opportunity to challenge herself and be out in the field without the regular guidelines of the university curriculum.

and the project she picked out put her adaptability to the test. though the algae was free for the taking, the makeshift jungle “laboratory” lacked a lot of the supplies and equipment she took for granted at her university. so, with king’s help, phillips found ways to make do with what she could find.

to get the coveted vegetable oil out of the algae for biodiesel, king said he and phillips needed a chemical solvent to break the oil from the cells it was locked inside. the two decided to start with methyl alcohol, already available as a waste product from the onsite rum distillery, and combine it with homemade chloroform.

“that was really awesome and really exciting because as far as research that we know of, it’s the first time using house-made solvents — like solvents that we actually made in house, on our own — to produce biodiesel,” phillips said

eventually, king said he wants to work on growing “massive amounts” of algae and phase out some of the diesel power being used at kalu yala, like in the backup generator and possibly vehicles as well.

on her end, phillips plans to try to get the research published and see if she can continue the project at her university. king says there’s still research to be done in figuring out the most efficient way to produce oil, streamlining factors like the algae species and extraction methods. phillips said she’s also considered returning to kalu yala as a teaching assistant.

no matter where her plans take her, though, phillips said she is dedicated to the pursuit of a greener tomorrow. to create a sustainable future, she said new technology has to be based in an understanding of biological science.

“that’s all chemistry. that’s all biology that’s being understood to create those things,” phillips said. “so i think it’s at the base of reversing climate change and implementing sustainability, because sure, sustainability might seem more like a practical idea, more applicable. but i think it takes knowledge of science and the earth and the ecosystem to apply.”

sustainable soldiers

while phillips was looking to the river for resources, her fellow biology intern jules hart had her eye to the sky.

hart, a 20-year-old biology student from the university of nevada, is the animal lover of the bunch. her project took on sustainability from the other end: while phillips’ natural biodiesel aimed to prevent waste, hart’s focused on breaking it down more efficiently. and the tools she used to accomplish that? a colony of living, breathing — and, most of all, eating — black soldier fly larvae.

“basically in the developmental stage, like when they’re larvae, their sole purpose is to eat decaying matter,” hart said of the species. “so they’re perfect for eating rotting food.”

the larvae act as decomposing machines, effectively devouring even the tough scraps that won’t compost easily. after weeks of trying in vain to attract enough flies for a functioning system, hart said she finally was able to establish a colony near the end of her semester, and since has collected thousands of larvae in a wooden structure into which she periodically dumps buckets of kitchen scraps.

though she realizes the teeming mass and putrid garbage smell might put others off, hart says the flies — which she often refers to as her “babies” — are a beautiful discovery for sustainable waste disposal. adult flies don’t carry disease vectors, she said, and since they only live long enough to reproduce (about a week), they won’t mess with the ecosystem or become a nuisance to the community. also, once the larvae reach the pupation stage, they become a “little bite of protein” that can be fed to kalu yala’s chicken or tilapia.

hart said the project and her entire stay at kalu yala were transformative for her. she came into the experience a little bit unfocused — she hadn’t been fully applying herself to her studies at school, she said, and living thousands of miles from her family and boyfriend took a toll on her emotional state.

but the time in the jungle, in addition to giving her insight into sustainable systems, also taught hart a lot about herself – like the fact that she wants to be a teacher (she called her school from kalu yala to add a major in education). and while she’s not sure of how to implement the moisture-loving larvae back in her hot and arid hometown of reno, nevada, hart said at the very least she’ll be taking home a renewed passion for her studies.

“being here and being in the nature and just really being in the middle of the biodiversity and just in the jungle, it’s totally rekindled my love for biology,” hart said. “out here traveling alone, getting here alone, being that emotionally vulnerable … it just helped me get to know myself and my limits and my strengths and weaknesses.”

keeping the momentum

despite the wealth of biological resources in the rich rainforest ecosystem, king said he and his students are part of only a small group of researchers working in the panamanian jungle and similar tropical regions.

“biodiversity tends to go up near the equator,” king said. “there’s a lot of issues all over the world and in other parts in the tropics. … not many people pay scientists or researchers to go out and document species.”

for an institute focused on sustainability, though, kalu yala hasn’t always succeeded at sustaining its own progress. as students come and go every 10 weeks, projects can get left behind; hopeful innovations fall into disrepair as new cohorts of students bustle in with their own ideas.

hart said her black soldier fly colony was actually in part a reincarnation of a project that had been attempted in prior years. the structure she uses to house her larvae had been built by a former kalu yalan with a similar plan, but the concept had been abandoned once its originator moved on from the jungle. she’s created a detailed manual for maintaining the black soldier fly colony, which she said will involve only minimal effort. still, the fate of her passion project lies in the hands of future interns, who will likely be preoccupied with their own big goals.

and when students leave, projects that at the time seem to have promising futures tend to stop maturing at 10 weeks. king said none of his former students have gotten published with the work they began at kalu yala, though he hopes that will change with phillips’ algae research.

tara mclaughlin, the president of the kalu yala institute, said continuity has been an issue in the past. she and other leaders are working to provide more support for interns so they can grow their projects beyond their brief semesters in the jungle.

“we’re going to start pushing into publication, trying to get accreditation (in partnership with a university),” mclaughlin said. “i would like to start opening up a more research station facility type thing, so getting independent researchers from universities down to be doing research and publishing and getting our name out there as a real academic powerhouse.”

even for those far from the lush canopy of the rainforest, hart said there is still work to be done. while the natural world might be more obvious at a place like kalu yala, she said biodiversity can and should be noticed anywhere in the world. if we as a species truly want to move toward a more sustainable lifestyle, hart believes it’s essential that we pay more attention to the richness of life that is everywhere we go.

“biodiversity is all around us. i mean, it is nature. it’s every plant, every animal, everything that you’re hearing and smelling and seeing is life and biology,” hart said. “so, of course it has to be considered when we’re trying to think about living in this type of environment and … living with the earth rather than living off it.”

about the author: medill student maddie burakoff can be reached at mburakoff@u.northwestern.edu and on twitter @madsburk.

the other day, i asked chris hornsby (sewanee class of 2019), left, to tell me his story. here’s what he had to say:

when asked to define my purpose in life, i have stated it as such: may i live with vision of a world which i may work to create, and ensure that the work of my hands may always be building this future. to explain this vision, let me begin with a bug.

this is the larvae of a black soldier fly (or bsf), raised in sewanee, tennessee, at the university farm that i work for.

using this insect, we can convert large quantities of food waste into a feed for chicken and fish. the bsf is native to most of the western hemisphere, and in its two week larval stage, it has the capability to eat twice its weight in a day. they are fed food waste from our dining hall and, in peak production, we plan to be taking 500 pounds of food waste a day.

after this two week phase, the larva will eclose into an adult fly with no mouth, so it is neither a disease vector nor a crop pest. before eclosion, we will feed a majority of these larva to chicken and fish being raised on the university farm, which in turn will be a food source for the students in sewanee. this closed-loop system has the capability to fulfill a service and create an agricultural product.

my dream, however, extends beyond sewanee. consider this: at a bare minimum, two people are required to run this system. one with a knowledge of bsf waste management, and one with a knowledge of how to finance and run a successful business. these two people will support themselves off the income of the business, deciding together what their allowable expenses are and where to reinvest profits. now, in the current status quo of entrepreneurialism and corporate hierarchy, these two individuals would become managers, and hire wage-labor employees. minimum wages flow downward, and maximized profits flow to the top.

i challenge this system as a fundamental source of capital inequality in our society, which produces an impoverished labor force, and a politically influential corporate elite. this is the nature of a consumerist society, as to further our own progression, we must constantly be encouraging economic growth and consumption of goods. this system has created a workforce surviving paycheck to paycheck, told to invest in the economy and buy useless goods in order to foster economic growth, while the elite enjoy the true profits of a subdued workforce.

rather than following this path toward inevitable inequality, the onus placed on any member wishing to join this model will be such: how will you work as a member to expand the income of this group to support your own financial needs? the possible answers to this question can be diverse, meeting a range of needs of the pre-existing group. an applying member may offer access to a wider customer base (those paying for waste service removal), thus increasing the monetary income of the group. or, they may offer the service of food preparation or cultivation, thus providing a non-monetary source of income.

at a time when this group continues to grow, they may decide to purchase some land, and grow their own food. thus a self-reliant community is born.

if any member of this group does not perform their function to the best of their ability, the community will fail. for example, if the individual running the business puts in foul labor, the community will have no monetary income. if the agriculturalist does not grow adequate food, the community will be hungry. if the home-builder fails to build adequate living space, the community will have no shelter. the interdependence of such a community is reinforced through mutual need.

therefore, all roles hold equal importance in overall success, and all members hold an equal voice in the decision-making process of where to allocate scarce resources, and what the needs of the community are. such a horizontal democracy extends beyond arbitrary divisions of race, class, and gender. through this model, the inequality and hierarchy of corporate america could be virtually eradicated. with communities producing their own food, the industrial agricultural complex will die, as its consumer base and workforce disappear into their own communities.

this model is applicable with any skilled trade as a means of providing income — imagine a community of doctors, trading with a community of waste managers to meet mutual needs. goodbye to the monopolistic healthcare industry. communities of educators teaching the children of america skilled trades, and how to live in a society that values wellbeing and happiness over success and wealth. goodbye to the state-sponsored education of robotic and bureaucratic laborers.

i wish to note, that purposefully, this community will not have great amounts of excess wealth, for this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. the needs of the community will be met, and nothing more. there can be no desire to waste precious resources on the unnecessary overconsumption of goods and services which meet no need. a community of this type also lacks the financial wealth to pay for swaths of land to be deforested for timber harvesting, or for oil to be mined, or for residential or commercial development, protecting the integrity of our land, our watersheds, our forests, or lifeblood, which we share with the diversity of creatures on earth.

to conclude, i would like to warn those who are seeking some glorious revolution to herald in a new age of equality and justice. refer to a history book on the subject, and you can clearly see (the) perpetual unfolding of such revolutions, in which the middle class usurps the lower class in order to establish themselves as the elite, then abandons their promises of liberty and freedom, and a new demographic is found to be oppressed. when power is used to disrupt power, control is lost. the victim of power is annihilated, and the user is intoxicated. thus, a true revolution will be a complete rejection of power as a means to dominate others, and total investment in the power of the tribal community.

rather than use violent means and political warfare to establish itself, community power will spread like wildfire with the strength of vision. this is not a revolution of words, but one of action. i invite you to invoke your own vision, and work with others to create a powerful, self-sustaining community.