Luxury tissue paper made from PANDA POO goes on sale in China (but would you want to use it?)

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The adorable black-and-white bear, a symbol of China, is starting a toilet paper revolution.

A new type of luxury tissue made with panda droppings has been launched in China.

Consumers can buy the unusual product, simply named 'Panda Poo', for 43 yuan (£4.8) a box. It's about 10 times the price of ordinary tissue paper in China.

Revo-loo-tionary: China's giant panda centre has teamed up with a paper manufacturer to produce tissues from panda dung

PANDA-monium: The unusual tissue paper, simply named 'Panda Poo', is made with panda droppings and bamboo leaves

One panda can produce around 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of excrement daily. Pictured, male Giant Panda Yang Guang eats bamboo in his enclosure at the Bifengxia Panda Centre near the city of Ya'an in Sichuan Province, China, on March 4, 2011

The tissue paper is produced with panda dung as well as waste bamboo leaves, according to Chengdu Business Daily.

The faeces come from pandas living in three bases of China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda - in Dujiangyan, Wolong and Bifengxia of Sichuan Province. 

The panda droppings would be selected, steamed and sterilised by workers who would then take natural fibre out of them to make the paper.

The extraordinary tissue paper is a joint product between China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda and Sichuan Jianwei Fengsheng Paper, a Sichuan-based firm that produces 60,000 tonnes of tissue paper a year.  

'Green ball': The picture taken in December 2012 shows a Chinese worker smelling panda faeces used as fertiliser to grow tea

Would you use it? Chinese consumers can now buy toilet rolls, box tissues and pocket tissues made with panda excrement 

Panda droppings are commonly known as 'green balls' among panda keepers. 

Huang Yan, a supervisor at the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda, told Chengdu Business Daily that an adult panda could eat 12 to 15 kilograms (26 to 33 pounds) of bamboo a day, which will in turn become 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of 'green balls'.

Because pandas are actually poorly adapted for digesting bamboo, their droppings mainly consist of broken bamboo leaves. 

In addition, as pandas won't eat all the bamboo leaves provided to them, each panda in the centre would generate some 50 kilograms of waste bamboo leaves every day, said Huang Yan.

Both the panda dung and waste bamboo are now used to make tissue paper. 

Luxury paper: The 'Panda Poo' paper is rather luxurious. A box of it costs 43 yuan (£4.8), 10 times the price of normal tissue

Environmental friendly: Workers extract fibre from panda droppings and waste bamboo leaves to make the luxury tissue

Apparently, pandas only absorb the sugar in bamboo and excrete the plant's fibre, it saves the workers' effort to abstract fibre from bamboo for making paper, according to Yang Chaolin, the chairman of Sichuan Jianwei Fengsheng Paper.

'Pandas get what they want and we do too. It's a win-win,' said Yang.

The company collects droppings and waste bamboo from the panda centre once every three to seven days. 

It uses them to make toilet rolls, box tissues and pocket tissues.  

PANDA DUNG CAN ALSO BE USED TO MAKE TEA

An Yanshi (pictured in suitable attire) has turned panda poo into tea that costs a staggering 440,000 yuan (£46,000) per kilogram

Chinese entrepreneur and university lecturer An Yanshi has been making a type of luxury tea with panda droppings for six years.  

In 2011, Mr An bought 11 tons of excrement from a panda breeding centre in Sichuan province in south-west China. He then used it to grow tea leaves in Ya'an, also in Sichuan Province.

The tea is known as 'panda tea'.

The first pick, which is harvested in March, could sell for a staggering 440,000 yuan (£46,000) per kilogram. 

Mr An promised drinkers they could expect 'a mature and nutty taste'.

He said: 'Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 per cent of everything they eat. 

'That means their excrement is rich in fibres and nutrients.

'Just like green tea, bamboo contains an element that can prevent cancer.'