Getting rid of dog poo in an environmentally friendly way

by MikeB · January 17, 2021

I don’t know about you but on my walks around the area where I live I not infrequently see small, black plastic bags containing dog poo on the pavement (sidewalk). It looks as though people are picking up their dog’s poop with a custom bag and then chucking the bag on the ground rather than putting it into a bin. In fact putting it into a bin is not very good either because it ends up in landfill.

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Compostable dog poop bags are good for the environment. Photo: Pixabay.

The experts tell us how to dispose of dog poop in an environmentally friendly way. The first task is to use a biodegradable, dog poop bag which you put into a dedicated compost bin. The compost produced is unsuitable for the vegetable garden because of the bacteria and I guess parasites that are potentially in dog poop.

Ben Dodd owns and runs a company called Adios Plastic which makes compostable waste bags. He wants dog owners to be better educated to make sure that they get rid of their dog poop bags in the right way. It seems that the U.K. is following Australia on this or perhaps they are working in parallel. Australia has 4 million domestic dogs producing about one ton of dog poop daily.

In Australia they have Bruce Hultgren, who founded and runs Oh Crap which manufacturers eco-friendly dog poo bags. He claims that his bags have kept at least 10 million plastic bags out of landfill in his country. Biodegradable bags break down in 3 to 6 months. The resulting compost is safe to spread on non-edible plants.

In Britain there are 10 million dogs and I’m told that many owners have turned to compostable bags. More dog owners could use these bags apparently as indicated by the “dog poo mountain” left at local beach near a beauty spot at Redcar, North Yorkshire.

A womery is an alternative way to produce compost with biodegradeable dog poop bags containing poop. Worms in a sealed container produce usable compost.

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