American Student Uses Ants to Analyze Food Waste!
Anania Gullur Nagendra, an American student, has developed a prototype of an aerobic digestion device that employs ants to break down food waste. Tests have shown the device achieves an efficiency rate of 83 percent.
The 18-year-old student, who attends Plano East Senior High School in Plano, Texas, developed the project as part of the Regeneron Science Talent Search, organized by Society for Science, in the animal sciences category.
According to the organization, food waste accounts for approximately 58 percent of methane emissions from landfills, making it one of the leading contributors to climate change. Motivated by this reality, the student sought to find a sustainable solution to mitigate the environmental impact of accumulating organic waste.
In the first phase of her research, Nagendra fed food waste to four different ant species to determine which species could decompose the largest amount of waste per ant per day. The results revealed that *Camponotus castaneus* consumed the greatest quantity of waste and recorded the highest metabolic rate among the four tested species.
Based on these findings, the student designed a mathematical model aimed at estimating the volume of methane emissions that could be reduced through the activity of this ant species, before moving on to the next stage: building a physical prototype of the digestion device.
The organization reported that the device developed by Nagendra costs no more than $50,000. Laboratory tests demonstrated an operational efficiency of approximately 83 percent, a result the organization described as potentially opening the door to practical solutions for reducing the environmental impact of food waste in landfills.
The project file submitted by the student to the competition included several notable elements, most prominently:
• Approximately 2,600 students applied to the competition, which was narrowed down to 300 finalists in the first stage, and then to just 40 who were announced on the final list on January 21, 2026.
Observers note that Nagendra’s project reflects a growing trend among U.S. high school students to harness biological solutions to address urgent environmental issues, particularly amid increasing criticism of traditional organic waste disposal methods.
Society for Science noted that the research results are still in the prototype stage, but they represent a starting point for developing less costly and more sustainable biological digestion systems that could potentially be scaled up in the future to cover a wider range of landfills.
