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Just FYI: any creature who eats only grass has much cleaner poop than anything that eats meat or 'processed garbage'. Since dogs eat whatever garbage they put in the food, its going to smell much worse and have pathogens in it. The safest way to dispose of any poop is to compost it and let it 'cook'. If you do this the right way, after a year you will have black gold (dirt). Modern wastewater treatment plants are unsustainable and bad for the environment. Composting is the way.
Not that it answers your question, but like others mentioned....surely there are ways to dispose of the poop without using plastic. What about used paper grocery bags (cut in hand sized pieces), paper that you would normally throw away or shred to pick it up and put it into a paper bag. Or....bring a bucket and collect it to throw in a compost pile. If you garden and value the benefits of compost you might see poop in a whole new light....
If you want to compost it, use a separate bin and do not use the mature product on plants intended for human food. See snofarmer's first post above.
The key words are "composted properly." If the pile does not get hot enough to kill parasites, you might have a problem. I would separate the dog poop and use it on the shrubbery, not the veggie garden.
Sorry, OP. Being green does not fly as an excuse to refuse to scoop your poop. Clean up after your dog.
People who don't scoop are directly responsible for getting dogs, everybody's dogs, banned from public places. That makes me feel hostile about the selfish inconsiderate people who won't keep their dogs properly under control and who won't take responsibility for keeping their dogs from annoying the public.
The public is extremely annoyed by stepping in dog poop, so scoop your poop and maybe we can still use the very few parks that still allow dogs.
My small "inside" dogs stay in our yard. I take them out to poop and then sometimes we go for a short walk on our long driveway.
We rarely go anywhere public with them, but I'd pick up behind them if they eliminated where a human might step. There's nothing nastier than trying to scrape dog poo out of the treads of sneakers.
We have a small fenced-in area where we let them loose to do their business. I go out afterwards (summer and winter) with a shovel and heave it under a big cedar tree (on the other side of the dog fence) that's in our yard. I swear that tree's gotten greener and grows faster since I've been doing this (about 4 years). It decomposts, obviously fertalizes the tree, and there isn't any smell. I highly recommend this if you have a low-branched tree in your yard unless you have a huge dog that does huge poops. Also, choose a tree that isn't too close to a neighbor's yard, If you have a large breed dog, you might want to try throwing it under a few trees in your yard so it has a chance to compost. This would only work if your dogs are confined to one area and the tree/s are in another. You wouldn't want your dogs snuffling or walking through all their poop under the tree/s.
i know we're supposed to pick up after our dog poops to keep our waters from being contaminated by such waste. however, which is more green--picking up the poop in plastic bags (that tend not to be biodegradable) or leaving the poop alone to run into our waters?
any green advice for this?
As long as the turds fall into your own yard, we could care less what you do with them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
Dog poop is a nuisance, but it's not poisonous. It's not going to "contaminate our waters."
Do you see anyone chasing coyotes with a pooper scooper? Or the proverbial bear in the woods? What do you do about all those birds?
Fecal coliforms (ecoli and such) live in the intestines of warm-blooded animals and will give you and I diseases.
Ever heard the saying, "Eat bleep and die"? It's true. Maybe not for Fifi though.
Go to a waste water treatment plant and ask them why they hit the water effluent with Chlorine / SO2 or uV rays before outputting to receiving waters.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zilam98
thats exactly what i thought. what about all the wildlife poop?
Just because it's natural doesn't mean you won't get typhoid, cholera,e.coli, hepatitis, polio, and other pathogens. This is why you don't go drinking out of a creek. Most people think that human waste is the only threat. Not true.
To dispose of it in a politically correct method would to scoop it up with a releasable instrument like a scoop or shovel.
Place it in your toilet or you dig a 3-4foot deep hole in your yard and dispose of it there.
These small, in-ground systems work the same way septic systems do: They liquefy any dog poop deposited there and drain the liquid into the surrounding soil. The digester system has two parts: the digester unit itself (including the lid), and the digester mix. Here's how to use them:
1. Find a convenient but out-of-the-way spot in your yard to install the digester.
2. Dig a hole that's about 48 inches deep.
3. Install the digester and lid in the hole. The lid should be just a little bit above the ground.
4. When your dog poops, bring the poop to the digester, remove the lid, and place the poop inside.
We had one of those when we had our house. It was great. We had a small yard and had to scoop the poop at least every week (had 3 dogs), because if not, in the Texas summer, the smell would keep you from ever wanting to go outside! Nasty nasty.
I wish that our apartment building had something similar around the grounds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke
Sorry, OP. Being green does not fly as an excuse to refuse to scoop your poop. Clean up after your dog.
People who don't scoop are directly responsible for getting dogs, everybody's dogs, banned from public places. That makes me feel hostile about the selfish inconsiderate people who won't keep their dogs properly under control and who won't take responsibility for keeping their dogs from annoying the public.
The public is extremely annoyed by stepping in dog poop, so scoop your poop and maybe we can still use the very few parks that still allow dogs.
Yeah same here. This kind of thing makes it that much harder for renters (like me) to find a place that will allow dogs!
I live in the country. My dogs poop in our field and I don't pick it up. The grass sure grows green where a big turd melted down into the soil. What do you think people amend their soil with? Not dog poo but cow poo, chicken poo, goat poo, seaweed, ground up bones...I just think that good soil is made up of many churning layers of poo, brown leaves, grass clippings weeds and more. Bacteria is necessary to break down said materials. Heaven forbid you should be downwind when they spread the pig poo on the field if you hate the smell of freshly cut grass mixed with dog poop.
Trust the Farmer, right? Try telling that to the poor Jensen family in Holly Colorado. Can anyone say Listeria?
That's right. Just a poor little innocent... natural bacteria. They failed to use a CL2 clensing process on some former potato harvesting equipment and people died.
Does this prompt me to not eat cantaloupe?
Quite the contrary. I clean root vegatables such as beets, carrots, onions, and fruit such as cantaloupe and watermelon with a soap scrubber and hot water. Where did I learn this necessity? From country folks and good cooks ... some from right here on this very forum.
Who cares about the minimal health risk?
In public places, it needs to be removed so people don't have to smell it or step in it.
Why don't we all throw our trash out the window?
Op, I have a metal rake and tray. It all gets picked up and tossed in the trash. No bag required...can be tossed into same big trash bag as regular trash.
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