This is right up there on the list of jobs I have no intention of ever doing. Panning for gold in septic tanks.
A town in southern China is proving that where there's muck, there's gold and silver.
In one of the most extreme signs of China's modern grasp of entrepreneurial possibilities, gold panners are striking deals with jewellery factories to buy the contents of their septic tanks.
The price of precious metals has soared to such record highs on the world's markets that sifting the tanks' contents for scrapings and offcuts has become a profitable business.
A reporter from a Chinese newspaper found a new breed of waste collectors touring the jewellery factories near Daluotang, a township near the city of Guangzhou.
They told him that small processing factories had discovered gold and silver filings in the septic tanks that had either washed off workers' hands and faces or been ingested accidentally.
Just remember kids, never put gold into your mouth. You never know where it's been. Which should really improve demand for the $25,000 dessert which has 'edible gold' in it. Well, after the eatery gets rid of the vermin and reopens, that is.
