Harry King had learned something that can be the key to great riches: there is very little, however disgusting, that isn't used somewhere in some industry. There are people out there who want large quantities of ammonia and saltpetre. If you can't sell it to the alchemists then the farmers probably want it. If even the farmers don't want it then there is nothing, nothing, however gross, that you can't sell to the tanners.
Harry felt like the only man in a mining camp who knows what gold looks like.
He started taking on whole streets at a time, and branched out. In the well-to-do areas the householders paid him, paid him, to take away night soil, the horse manure, the dustbins and even the dog muck. Dog muck? Did they have any idea how much the tanners paid for the finest white dog muck? It was like being paid to take away squishy diamonds.
Harry couldn't help it. The world fell over itself to give him money. Someone, somewhere, would pay him for a dead horse or two tons of prawns so far beyond their best-before date it couldn't be seen with a telescope, and the most wonderful part of all was that someone had already paid him to take them away.

- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

choad wrote:

Still got the archive, eh?

Oh, hell, yeah--I'm never getting rid of that.

In case you haven't heard, there's some rather bad news about Mr. Pratchett.