Looking for new, sustainable ways to utilize plastics is still a very pertinent topic considering the amount of plastics produced in the world. One of the newest and intriguing possibility is the use of insects in biodegradation of plastics, which can be named entomoremediation. The aim of this work was to demonstrate the ability of the insect Tenebrio molitor to biodegrade different, real plastic waste. The types of plastic waste used were: remains of thermal building insulation polystyrene foam (PS), two types of polyurethane (kitchen sponge as PU1 and commercial thermal insulation foam as PU2), and polyethylene foam (PE), which has been used as packaging material. After 58 days, the efficiency of mass reduction for all of the investigated plastics was 46.5%, 41.0%, 53.2%, and 69.7% for PS, PU1, PU2, and PE, respectively (with a dose of 0.0052 g of each plastic per 1 mealworm larvae). Both larvae and imago were active plastic eaters. However, in order to shorten the duration of the experiment and increase the specific consumption rate, the two forms of the insect should not be combined together in one container.

In this work, fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) were inscribed in two different undoped poly- (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polymer optical fibres (POFs) using different types of UV lasers and their inscription times, temperature and strain sensitivities are investigated. The POF Bragg gratings (POFBGs) were inscribed using two UV lasers: a continuous UV HeCd @325 nm laser and a pulsed UV KrF @248 nm laser. Two PMMA POFs are used in which the primary and secondary preforms (during the two-step drawing process) have a different thermal treatment. The PMMA POFs drawn in which the primary or secondary preform is not specifically pre-treated need longer inscription time than the fibres drawn where both preforms have been pre-annealed at 80 °C for 2 weeks. Using both UV lasers, for the latter fibre much less inscription time is needed compared to another homemade POF. The properties of a POF fabricated with both preforms thermally well annealed are different from those in which just one preform step process is thermally treated, with the first POFs being much less sensitive to thermal treatment. The influence of annealing on the strain and temperature sensitivities of the fibres prior to FBG inscription is also discussed, where it is observed that the fibre produced from a two-step drawing process with well-defined pre-annealing of both preforms did not produce any significant difference in sensitivity. The results indicate the impact of preform thermal pre-treatment before the PMMA POFs drawing, which can be an essential characteristic in the view of developing POF sensors technology.