Panda poo paper finds niche market

CHINA: Paper that is made from what pandas eat, poo and leave has gone on sale in China, in an effort to capitalise on the animals’ popularity and solve a perennial problem.

Until now, conservation workers had found it difficult to dispose of the animals’ ample waste, known by their keepers as green balls because of the quantities of bamboo fibre ‘‘crumbs’’ produced.

An adult panda consumes 12 to 15 kilograms of bamboo a day and produces more than 10kg in faeces, but pandas with more refined palates discard tougher stems and can produce 50kg of bamboo crumbs a day.

Until now, this detritus was either turned into compost or thrown away as rubbish. The China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda in the southwest province of Sichuan has now signed a deal with a local company to turn the waste into tissue paper, marketed as Panda Poo paper and on sale for the equivalent of £4.80 a packet.

The centre has about 300 pandas at the three breeding sites that are supplying the Sichuan Qianwei Fengsheng Paper company with raw material.

Huang Yan, an official at the conservation centre, said that it may at last have found a profitable solution to the longstanding problem. ‘‘It was a trouble for us and it caused some pollution.’’

The paper is relatively expensive compared with more mainstream brands but the manufacturer believes that it has production advantages and a niche market. Yang Chaolin, the company president, said there was a market among animal lovers and environmentalists.

He said that through digestion, the pandas helped to extract bamboo fibres, which meant that his company could skip some of the processing. The raw material is washed, steamed and sanitised before being turned into tissue or lavatory paper.

The city government in Chengdu announced the breakthrough in its social media account. The conservation centre reassured one anxious reader: ‘‘The poop of the pandas smells good.’’