Next time that souvenir is handed to you, it may add to your list of eco-friendly products. But, knowing the source of it being the ‘poo’ of a Giant Panda may appear yuckiest, but, don’t worry - it is odor-free and of course sterilized.
Thanks to the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base for coming up with this noble cause towards the environment. Transforming tons of the panda droppings into useful products like bookmarks and Olympic-themed statues has made it a lucrative raw material, which were otherwise left to rot and go unused and getting rid of which costs huge.
The Sichuan-based facility feeds about 40 pandas with bamboo to produce less than a ton fiber-rich excrement each day. The undigested bamboo from the panda waste is then specially processed to make such useful products.
Explaining the process of the transformation, an official at the Chengdu facility said that,
The dung is carefully selected, smashed, dried and sterilized at 300 degrees Celsius (572 degrees Fahrenheit). The products will be of all colors because they will be dyed.
The other advantage of this fiber-rich panda poo is that they don’t smell too bad as 70 percent of it is just the remains of the undigested-bamboo.
Thailand’s Chiang Mai Zoo already sells multicolored paper made from waste produced by its two resident pandas.
Besides diversifying eco-friendly products, such growing lucrative market for the endangered species’ dung will surely save the only 1,590 living panda’s of China’s wild from the arms-edges of the animals’ smugglers.
