Cities in China are filled with millions of people and the waste they are producing is more than landfills can keep up with. That’s why billions of cockroaches have been turned into a business. The air is kept humid and warm just the way a cockroach needs it to be and you can hear the bugs before you ever see them. But these creatures that many view as nasty, may be just the cure for the problem.

They get rid of mountains of scraps and provide nutritious food for livestock when they die. Many claim they are even good for beauty treatments and make an excellent treatment for stomach issues.

In eastern Shandong province, some billion cockroaches consume 50 tons of waste each day. The waste arrives early morning at a plant run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co. The waste is delivered to the cockroach cells through pipes. They hope to set up three more additional plants in the next year that will process one-third of the waste produced by the seven million people living in Jinan.

The company says that cockroaches are a biotechnological pathway they are using to convert kitchen waste in to resources because they also make a good source of protein for livestock.

In Sichuan, a man named Li Bingcai has invested almost $150,000 into raising cockroaches which he now sells to fisheries and pig farms as feed and to drug companies for their medicinal uses. Although people think it is strange what he does, his business is booming. He has 3.4 million cockroaches and is growing. He hopes to encourage additional farmers to follow his lead.

Right now, the village has two cockroach farms and Li hopes to create 20. Another company in Sichuan called Gooddoctor has six billion cockroaches. They say cockroaches are good for curing oral and peptic ulcers, skin wounds, and even stomach cancer.

The life span of a cockroach is about six months. After they die they are blasted by steam, washed and dried, then sent to an extraction tank. The extraction is then sent to companies who are researching their use in diet pills, beauty treatments, and hair-loss treatments.

When the farmers were asked about the likelihood of the cockroaches escaping, they admitted that it would be a disaster, but they have taken extra precautions.

One farmer said he has a moat around his facility that is filled with water and fish. If they escape, they will fall into the moat and the fish will eat them.

Who knew that cockroaches had so many uses? Be sure to share this one of a kind story with your family and friends.