NRDC's This Green
Life, January 2008
January 2008
Pets and
Their Poop
The pet
population is on the rise and, with it, a certain problem: how to get rid of
all that poop.
I began
thinking about this the other day when I found myself without a single plastic
bag at dog-walking time — a crisis I had never faced before. Usually, I
have shopping bags aplenty, which I justify using for my groceries on the
grounds that they get a second life as poop picker-uppers. Self-serving?
Perhaps. Yet what other options are there? On the hunch that you may have
wondered, too, I investigated.
First, let's go
over what not to do
and why:
Don't leave
a dog's deposits near the curb. It will get washed, via the storm sewer, into local waterways,
spreading pathogens that can make the water unfit for drinking and swimming.
When it decomposes, it will use up oxygen needed by fish and other aquatic
life. Also, the nutrients it releases, combined with fertilizer run-off, may
cause algae blooms that could make the water uninhabitable. Even if your town
has a "combined sewer system" that sanitizes storm water before
dumping it, heavy rains and snows can overwhelm the system, causing untreated
discharges.
Oh yeah,
leaving poop on the pavement is also unneighborly and, in many towns, illegal.
Don't leave
it on your lawn. It may
wash into the storm sewer in a rainstorm, with the consequences described
above. Besides, the pathogens in the poop are dangerous to kids playing in the
yard — and anyone else who comes in contact with the ground. They can
also contaminate edibles growing in your vegetable garden.
Don't add it
to your compost pile.
The pile won't get hot enough to kill the pathogens.
Now, here are
the acceptable methods of disposal:
Throw it in
the trash, provided your
municipality allows it. (Some towns have special disposal requirements.) A
plastic bag, or two, turns out to be the best thing to wrap it in (not, thank
goodness, newspaper, which can be such a trial to use with messy poops). The
goal is to contain the waste in the event of a trash spill or landfill leak.
But rather than
use plastic shopping bags, as I've been doing, it may be better to buy plastic
doggie bags, which are smaller, and switch to reusable fabric bags for
groceries.
You can even
buy corn-based, biodegradable doggie bags. They won't disintegrate anytime soon
in the oxygen-less conditions of a landfill (which is a good thing because of
the aforementioned danger of landfill leaks), but the fact that they're made
from a plant instead of oil presumably confers some environmental advantage. I
say "presumably" because the corn is probably grown with chemical
pesticides and fertilizers, and I don't know if the tradeoff is worth it.
Use a poop
collection service to
pick it up from your lawn. This is equivalent to throwing it in the trash, but
someone else does it for you. How convenient!
Flush it
down the toilet. Highly
recommended. If your home is connected to the municipal sewage system, the poop
will be sent to the wastewater treatment plant, which will kill the bacteria
and rid the water of nutrients and solids before letting it loose on the world.
A private septic system will do much the same thing, but make sure yours has
the capacity to handle the extra load and confirm with the manufacturer that
this is an approved use.
To get the poop
to the toilet, you can either use a plastic bag, which you would tie up and
dispose of in the trash, or a flushable doggie bag made of soluble polyvinyl
alcohol. I feel a bit uncomfortable recommending the flushable bags because the
polyvinyl alcohol will end up in a body of water somewhere, and ultimately in
our bodies (as it already does from other uses), but the research I've read
does suggest that its toxicity is low.
Bury it in
your yard. It's the natural
solution. Just check that your water table isn't too high, in which case the
feces could get into groundwater. Locate your holes away from any vegetable
gardens, lakes, streams, ditches or wells and dig them at least five inches
deep. To pick up the poop, try the biodegradable corn bags mentioned above,
which can be dropped in the ground with the poop inside and covered with dirt.
The microorganisms in the soil will take it from there.
Install an
underground pet wastedigester. This inexpensive device, also known as a doggy dooley, works
like a small septic system for your pets, with a minimum of hassle for you. If
I had a yard, this would be my disposal method of choice.
Now, here's the
scoop on cat poop. EPA brochures and a variety of other publications say you
can flush it down the toilet, minus the litter. However, research suggests that
the eggs of Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite found in cat poop, may survive the
wastewater treatment process and contaminate waterways. While Toxoplasma rarely
affects healthy people, it can cause defects and brain damage in babies whose
mothers were exposed when pregnant. Brain disease can also develop in people
with compromised immune systems. In addition, Toxoplasma has been shown to harm
sea otters and may affect other wildlife as well. As the eggs can last for up
to a year in soil, burying cat poop is also problematic. For this reason,
researchers working in the field recommend keeping cats indoors and disposing
of waste and litter in the trash in sealed plastic bags.
—Sheryl
Eisenberg
Sheryl
Eisenberg, a long-time
advisor to NRDC, posts a new This Green Life every month. Sheryl makes her home in
Tribeca (NYC), where—along with her children, Sophie and Gabby, and
husband, Peter—she tries to put her environmental principles into
practice. No fooling.
ONLINE
RESOURCES
THE HUMANE
SOCIETY
United
States Pet Ownership Statistics
USA TODAY
Dog Waste
Poses Threat to Water
EPA
Pet Waste
and Water Quality
SFGATE
The
Environmental Impact of Pets
SFGATE
Powered by
Pooches
GREEN CULTURE
Pet Waste
Products
CITY FARMER
Pet Waste
Composting
WHAT'S KILLING
CALIFORNIA SEA OTTERS?
Facts about
Toxo and Cat Poop
Density
makes the difference.
Wild animals, like this fox, don't need to be picked up after because they
don't live on top of one another the way we and our pets do. For example, my
dog, Tolly, (above) shares an apartment house on 3,000 square feet of land with
six other dogs and cats.
Population
pressure. The
reason we have to take such pains to dispose of pet waste properly is that we
have too many pets. With three cats and a dog, I am hardly in a position to
preach doing without, but I do urge you to spay your pets and adopt homeless
animals rather than buy from a shop.
By the way, the
Humane Society estimates that 25
percent of dogs in shelters are purebred. You can also get purebred dogs from dog rescue groups.
Greener
litter choices. The
most commonly used litter is made of clay, which needs to be mined from the
earth. Not good. So give one of the greener litters, made of recycled wood
shavings or paper a try, and see if your cat will take to it. You may have more
success if you start your cat out on it early. Some cats have trouble adjusting
to any change.
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Green Life sent to
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---------------------------------
Sheryl
Eisenberg is a web
developer and writer. With her firm, Mixit Productions (http://www.mixitproductions.com), she brought NRDC online in 1996,
designed NRDC's first websites, and continues to develop special web features
for NRDC. She created and, for several years, wrote the Union of Concerned
Scientists' green living column, Greentips, and has designed and contributed
content to many nonprofit sites. © 2008 Natural Resources Defense Council
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