"You could say it's a win-win for both us and the pandas"
A Chinese firm is turning panda faeces into tissue paper.
According to BBC, the national China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda reserve in Sichuan province signed a deal with a paper producing company to recycle the animals’ waste.
The pandas in the reserve produce about 50kg of waste, which is comprised of uneaten bamboo. The waste will be recycle into ‘Panda Poo’ tissues by the Sichuan Qianwei Fengsheng Paper Company.
Every week, the firm will collect the panda faeces and food waste, which would otherwise be discarded or used as fertiliser.
The firm will carry out a 60-step process to recycle the faeces, including boiling, pasteurisation, and fibre extraction.
Yang Chaolin, president of the company, said the pandas will have stripped out the fructose and extracted the fibres from the bamboo during digestion, which is an essential step in paper production.
“In this way, everyone gets what they want, and you could say it’s a win-win for both us and the pandas,” Mr Yang said.
Tissues, paper towels and toilet paper marketed under the ‘Panda Poo’ brand will be made from by the firm, with one box of tissues costing 43 yuan.