After getting a whiff of giraffe manure at the zoo, perhaps you wouldn't think of it as something you'd want heating your house.
But hundreds of residents in France will soon find out what it's like.
A zoo in western France has teamed up with some local cattle farmers, to come up with an environmentally-friendly way of heating 1,700 homes in the area – giraffe and cow manure.
The Doué-la-Fontaine zoo in the Pays de la Loire region, near the city of Angers, has joined with 35 farmers to create a business called SAS Doué-Métha to help them in this endeavour, BFM TV reports.
They’ll use a factory in Concourson-sur-Layon, that will use the manure from the zoo animals and local cows to produce methane. The methane from this factory, set to open in 2017, will be injected directly into gas lines in the region.
They predict the the animals’ dung will create two million cubic metres of methane per year, enough to heat 1,700 households in the Angers area, out of about 111,000.
A special distribution station will be setup in Saint-Jean-des-Mauvrets, with a truck making the liaison between the the factory and the station twice per week.
The giraffes can hold their heads up high for doing a good deed for the community.
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