Pet Carbon Footprints

[Catherine]

A UCLA researcher has started to look at the carbon food print our pets leave. In particular he was looking at cats and dogs.
It is a subject worth thinking about. How can we have our pets and still not leave a large carbon footprint.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/uc...-1.4277975

We need to change our lifestyles to reduce our carbon foot-print. It makes sense that we would have to make some changes in  our pet's lifestyle as well.  Certainly we could review their food to make sure it is ethically produced in a way that is sustainable. 
How we dispose of their waste is also an issue. Can we compost it or use products that are biodegradable. 

This is a whole new area of being ecologically responsible. If people respond and make it a priority there could be real positive results for the environment.  I am able to compost all my pet waste. I am sure the little poop bags that dog people carry could be biodegradable. Think of all the plastic that would save.

[LPC]

I think that there is a big division between urban and country pets here. My mother's cat is almost always outside and does his business outside. So it degrades naturally. Forgy equally always does his business outside on walks, far from people and farm animals. I think that goes for many countryside pets. On the odd occasion when our cat or dog do something in the garden, I have some biodegradable sacks to clear up.

For town people, there is less choice. They have to clear up on every occasion. In towns there are less opportunities to make manure or compost - and cat poo is, I believe, not a good idea for compost:
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/compost...ompost.htm

Dog poo, however, can apparently be used with precautions:
http://sarasota.ifas.ufl.edu/compost/dog-waste.shtml

I would imagine that the manure of reptiles would be good for use because of their diet. Is that so, Catherine?

[Tobi]

I definitely think those dog poop bags should be biodegradable. People think they are cleaning up after their dog...and then dump the bag in a hedge on their way home! The bag stays knotted and intact for a VERY long time. I know because I monitored one years ago, and it is still there intact. Now if that dog had done his business on the earth, that waste would have been gone in a week; absorbed into the soil.
I think those bags are a bane...but as LPC said, I live in a rural place where a bit of poop is nothing.
Insects use it too, which helps to break it down. Many a beautiful butterfly I have seen feeding on dog waste!

In a city or built up area of course they have to be used. Technically they should be incinerated, and probably are if they are put into dog waste bins. But some people are irresponsible with what they have collected.

But I always prefer burying dog waste if it's done outside in a place where people walk and you don't want someone to step in it. I used to gather up bits of torn grass, handfuls of earth (mole hills are useful for this!) or leaf mould.

[Catherine]

I suspect the article is thinking more about city pets. They can have a real impact on the environment even if they don't go outside. The waste still has to be disposed of. 

Those were good articles about composting dog and cat waste. I never thought of the danger of using cat and dog poop in a composter.

We have a city green bin program. Anything organic can be composted by the city. You just put it out once a week in a big green bin and the city will collect it. I don't know how they do this, but they do take pet waste. We get it back next year as rich fertilizer. It is dropped off in the spring in parks and parking lots of schools. You can take home as much as you want for free. My city councillor was there with a shovel filling peoples bins. It is good stuff and free!

Snake poop is nasty. It is mixed with wood shavings and I toss it in the green bin. I am sure it makes rich compost, but not in my back yard. The smell would be unreal. We stopped having back yard composters because of the rat problem. Big cities have brown rats by the thousands. I see them in the subway sometimes.

You are right about the poop and scoop bags they use for dogs. They seem to live forever on the sidewalks. People will pick up after the dog, but then they don't dispose of the bag with the poop in it. Those are the bags that need to be biodegradable.

Dig I tell you that I use biodegradable bags for snake poop.