<p>China’s national treasure, the giant panda, will become even more precious if one businessman succeeds in using their dung to grow organic green tea he intends to sell for over $200 a cup.<br /><br />An Yanshi, an entrepreneur in southwest China, grows the tea in mountainous Ya’an in Sichuan province using tons of excrement from panda bears living at nearby breeding centres.</p>.<p>The first batch of panda dung tea will be sold in lots of 50 grams that will cost some 22,000 yuan ($3,500) each, a price An said makes it the world’s most expensive tea. Most people use about 3 grams of tea per cup.<br /><br />An defended the steep price, saying he would channel profits from the initial batches into an environmental fund. Future batches would be cheaper, he added.<br /><br />“I thank heaven and earth for blessing us with this environmental panda tea,” the 41-year-old former teacher and journalist said at a weekend event to promote the tea.<br /><br />“I just want to convey to the people of the world the message of turning waste into something useful, and the culture of recycling and using organic fertilisers.”<br />Dressed in a panda suit to promote his tea, An invited a dozen or so guests to help hand-pick the first batch of tea at his plantation at the weekend.<br /><br />The fertiliser made the tea a health boon, An said, because pandas only eat wild bamboo and absorb only a fraction of the nutrients in their food.<br />And pandas make plenty of fertiliser.<br /><br />“They are like a machine that is churning out organic fertiliser,” An said. </p>
<p>China’s national treasure, the giant panda, will become even more precious if one businessman succeeds in using their dung to grow organic green tea he intends to sell for over $200 a cup.<br /><br />An Yanshi, an entrepreneur in southwest China, grows the tea in mountainous Ya’an in Sichuan province using tons of excrement from panda bears living at nearby breeding centres.</p>.<p>The first batch of panda dung tea will be sold in lots of 50 grams that will cost some 22,000 yuan ($3,500) each, a price An said makes it the world’s most expensive tea. Most people use about 3 grams of tea per cup.<br /><br />An defended the steep price, saying he would channel profits from the initial batches into an environmental fund. Future batches would be cheaper, he added.<br /><br />“I thank heaven and earth for blessing us with this environmental panda tea,” the 41-year-old former teacher and journalist said at a weekend event to promote the tea.<br /><br />“I just want to convey to the people of the world the message of turning waste into something useful, and the culture of recycling and using organic fertilisers.”<br />Dressed in a panda suit to promote his tea, An invited a dozen or so guests to help hand-pick the first batch of tea at his plantation at the weekend.<br /><br />The fertiliser made the tea a health boon, An said, because pandas only eat wild bamboo and absorb only a fraction of the nutrients in their food.<br />And pandas make plenty of fertiliser.<br /><br />“They are like a machine that is churning out organic fertiliser,” An said. </p>