As a longtime dog owner, I’d always thought, perhaps naively, that disposing of dog poop was straightforward. You make sure you have a plastic bag in your pocket before heading out with the pooch, pick up his or her calling card, bring it home and toss it in the trash.
But a recent article in The Oregonian newspaper suggests there’s more to pup poop pickup patrol than meets the nose.
The issue arose in Oregon because city leaders in Portland (“the other Portland,” as we call it here in Maine) and officials in the state Capitol there are looking at measures to ban plastic shopping bags. Dog owners, myself included, often set aside those bags and reuse them when we're on dog duty.
The article pointed out that using a product made from a fossil-fuel derivative to store dog poop so it can be deposited in a landfill doesn’t seem to be the ideal solution to the problem, “but most of the available alternatives -- including several decorated with a green label -- are no kinder to Mother Earth.”
There are biodegradable bags for poop, for example, but the story in The Oregonian quoted a state environmental official in Oregon as saying only the stuff at the top of a landfill has access to oxygen, which promotes the desired degrading. Bags that are farther down in the pile need anaerobic bacteria in order to decompose, and that process forms undesirable methane as a byproduct.
How about collecting poop in flushable bags that can be dropped in the toilet? One problem with that solution is that, if enough people do it, it can overburden sewage-treatment plants. Plus, the bacteria used in treatment plants to break down sewage are not ideally suited to dealing with dog waste. And officials are skeptical about whether supposedly flushable bags actually live up to their name.
The article notes that there are compostable poop bags on the market too, as well as dog composters (for the waste, not for the dog!). But unless the temperature in the pile tops 140 degrees, composting won’t kill bacteria. And even then, it’s not clear if high heat kills heartworm parasites found in dog waste. So you have to be careful where and how you use canine compost.
Burying dog waste in your yard is okay, the story said, but only if the poop zone is nowhere near a body of water. Plus (and this is me talking) who wants to dig a big hole in the backyard as a poop depository, and then toss in a layer of dirt to top off every deposit?
But a recent article in The Oregonian newspaper suggests there’s more to pup poop pickup patrol than meets the nose.
The issue arose in Oregon because city leaders in Portland (“the other Portland,” as we call it here in Maine) and officials in the state Capitol there are looking at measures to ban plastic shopping bags. Dog owners, myself included, often set aside those bags and reuse them when we're on dog duty.
The article pointed out that using a product made from a fossil-fuel derivative to store dog poop so it can be deposited in a landfill doesn’t seem to be the ideal solution to the problem, “but most of the available alternatives -- including several decorated with a green label -- are no kinder to Mother Earth.”
There are biodegradable bags for poop, for example, but the story in The Oregonian quoted a state environmental official in Oregon as saying only the stuff at the top of a landfill has access to oxygen, which promotes the desired degrading. Bags that are farther down in the pile need anaerobic bacteria in order to decompose, and that process forms undesirable methane as a byproduct.
How about collecting poop in flushable bags that can be dropped in the toilet? One problem with that solution is that, if enough people do it, it can overburden sewage-treatment plants. Plus, the bacteria used in treatment plants to break down sewage are not ideally suited to dealing with dog waste. And officials are skeptical about whether supposedly flushable bags actually live up to their name.
The article notes that there are compostable poop bags on the market too, as well as dog composters (for the waste, not for the dog!). But unless the temperature in the pile tops 140 degrees, composting won’t kill bacteria. And even then, it’s not clear if high heat kills heartworm parasites found in dog waste. So you have to be careful where and how you use canine compost.
Burying dog waste in your yard is okay, the story said, but only if the poop zone is nowhere near a body of water. Plus (and this is me talking) who wants to dig a big hole in the backyard as a poop depository, and then toss in a layer of dirt to top off every deposit?
Chocolate lab Aquinnah and pit bull/lab Martha, our pups, were a bit taken aback when I explained all of this to them. But I relieved some of their anxiety by pointing out that their poop is no more toxic than the stuff churned out by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. And unlike the waste from those two bloviators, at least canine crap emerges from the appropriate end of the system.
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