Chinese firm Qianwei Fengsheng Paper has teamed up with the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda to recycle animal's faeces and food debris into toilet paper, napkins and other household products, news agency AFP reported on Wednesday.
The goods, soon to be released on the Chinese market, will be marketed as part of a "panda poo" product line decorated with a picture of the bamboo-eating, black-and-white bear, the report said citing state media.
"They're taking care of our garbage for us," Huang Yan, a researcher at the giant panda centre, told the Chengdu Business Daily.
Huang told Xinhua state news agency that the 10kg of bamboo poo that adult pandas unleash daily are rich in fibre after absorbing the fructose from the shoots, reported Channel News Asia.
In addition to their valuable dung, pandas also produce 50kg of food waste every day from the bamboo husks they spit out after chewing.
While the process of turning bamboo into paper generally involves the breaking down of fructose to extract fibre, this step naturally occurs in the pandas' digestive tract, the paper company's president, Yang Chaolin, told Xinhua.
Boxes of "panda poo" tissues will be sold at 43 yuan (US$6.50) a pop.
