Next Green Thing: Termite Guts

In the world of social insects, the lowly termite gets no respect. Sure, ants and bees have their champions and are lauded for their social cohesion and industriousness. Termites, on the other hand, are the bane of homeowners everywhere. They eat up about $11 billion in U.S. property each year. Some species also have the rather unsocial habit of snapping the heads off of invading ants.

But termites may have gotten a bad rap. With rising oil prices, their ability to turn wood waste into fuel has sparked the interest of researchers, who have struggled to turn wood and grasses into biofuels. As part of our “next green thing” series, we wanted to find out whether we could harness the termite’s efficiency, to run our economy on sawdust, lawn clippings and old magazines.

Lisa Margonelli is a fellow at the New America Foundation, writes about global culture and the economy of energy, and is the author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long Strange Trip to your Tank. Her article "Gut Reactions" appears in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly, and she agreed to lead Word of Mouth into the mysterious third gut of the termite.

(Photo by Steve Ryan)