Chew faster! There's another tour bus due at three...From USA Today:
Not to be outdone, Thailand has come up with yet another, seemingly
unlikely way to capitalize on this globally loved, bamboo-munching animal —
panda poop.
When keepers of the country's panda couple — Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui —
got tired of disposing the 55 pounds of feces daily produced by the duo,
Prasertsak Buntragulpoontawee came up with the idea of turning it all into
notebooks, fans, bookmarks and key chains.
"At first the Chinese were very skeptical," says the head of Chiang Mai
Zoo's panda unit, referring to the proprietary attitude China takes toward its
iconic animal.
But the multicolored paper products have proved hot selling-items at the
zoo, with the $8,200 earned to date helping balance the accounts of panda
keeping.
The Thai government pays $250,000 a year to China's Wulong Panda Research
Institute to rent the pandas, who, depending on the weather, reside in either a
$1 million air-conditioned cage or an extensive, fan-cooled outdoor enclosure
ringed by a mini-replica of China's Great Wall.
Panda poop paper production involves a day-long process of cleaning the
feces, boiling it in a soda solution, bleaching it with chlorine and drying it
under the sun. Experimentation continues on how to reduce the chemicals now
used.
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