Taiping Zoo turning elephant dung into fertiliser

Compiled by BEH YUEN HUI, BENJAMIN LEE and R. ARAVINTHAN

TAIPING Zoo has taken the lead in turning animal waste into manure, Nanyang Siang Pau reported.

Its director Dr Muhamad Ridhwan Affendi said the zoo and night safari park had been making organic fertiliser using elephant dung.

“We are the first zoo in Malaysia to do so,” he said, adding that the zoo had 11 elephants.

Previously, the animal faeces were dumped at the Matang landfill about 15km away, he added. “Now, we produce between 300kg and 500kg of manure daily for the park’s own use,” he said.

Dr Muhamad Ridhwan said the park planned to purchase a machine to process fertiliser and to collect the waste of more herbivores such as deer and goats.

“When everything is in place, we can produce 500 bags of organic fertiliser daily and sell them. Each bag of 2.5kg fertiliser can be sold at RM6,” he added.

>A helpless husband was seen slapping himself after failing to stop his more than 150kg wife from eating supper in China.

According to China Press, a video of the incident has gone viral on Chinese social media.

It is believed the wife had sneaked out to eat fried drumsticks in the wee hours of the morning. As she was enjoying the meal, her husband appeared and snatched away the food before dumping it.

A heated argument and scuffle ensued with the husband pressing his wife onto the ground.

“It’s 3am, eating drumstick one after another, you are already over 150kg, do you want to leave me and our daughter so soon?” he shouted.

He then slapped himself a few times and stormed off, leaving his wife struggling to get to her feet.

The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.