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News UK facing animal welfare emergency as record number of owners forced to give up their pets Read More While most dog owners are caring, responsible individuals, there are still some people who do not clean up after their pets.
When it comes to shrinking your dog’s carbon paw print, keep in mind that not all products with a green label are alike. Some dog poop bags are made of “oxo-biodegradable” plastic, which means they’ve been treated with metal salts to help speed up their breakdown in landfills. A step up from conventional plastic, oxo-biodegradable bags turn into small fragments, or “micro-plastics” which will unfortunately remain in the environment. We also started questioning the logic that these compostable poo bags 'prevent plastic ending up in landfills and the ocean' - a common marketing trope. After asking our customers we found practically no one was composting compostable poo bags and over 95% were disposing of them in general waste i.e. landfill or incineration. This is in line with other research that shows home composting isn't a viable or scalable solution for compostable plastics.More than half of local authorities reported “an increase in both unbagged dog poo left on the ground and bagged dog poo, for example left hanging from railings or trees” since the start of 2021, in a recent survey by Keep Britain Tidy. It’s just crazy, the amount I’m finding, it’s everywhere. Particularly on one footpath through a wood where sometimes every step you take there is a poo bag, just thrown into a hedge, on a tree or just on the floor,” she says. I realised this wasn’t a problem only I suffered, when one day sitting in car after walking my dog I saw 4 other people go through the almost identical ritual I had done 1 hour earlier. Although my husband, Barry, and i had had successful careers in London, Barry as an advertising account director at top advertising agencies such as Bartle Bogle and Hegarty and myself as an theatrical agent and later running my own dance school and theatre school, neither of us had the knowledge or expertise to manufacture a product.
Many, although by no means all, of these may never have bought dogs if it wasn’t for the pandemic and so may be less committed, experts suggest. There has never been a better time to go green. Honestly priced dog poo bags designed and made, by dog owners for dog owners.So what happens to compostable or biodegradable plastic in landfill? We were horrified to learn that not only would they potentially take years (possibly centuries) to breakdown in landfill, they would also produce methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. When we spoke with Dr Carly Fletcher, a Bioplastics researcher from Manchester Metropolitan University, Dr Fletcher advised the difference between plastic and compostable/biodegradable plastic in incineration was likely negligible. However we found one study showing PBAT (the main ingredient in compostable and biodegradable poo bags) releases significantly more carcinogens than standard plastic when incinerated. So what are the options, considering the above? Comprehensive dog poo data is fairly thin on the ground, making it difficult to monitor trends with much precision. There is a growing consensus that problem is getting worse again, however. Why recycled plastic? The manufacture of recycled plastic requires less energy and produces fewer carbon emissions compared to compostable plastic. It also reduces the amount of plastic ending up in the open environment, landfill or incineration by capturing and re-using it. This alone is bad enough but add in to the equation a small child and a dog that likes to chase a ball; you have entered dog walking hell! Do you: Poor training can cause all sorts of problems, including a greater tendency for owners to let dogs off their leads and for them to hare about more when they do – increasing the potential for those dogs to make their deposits far away where the owner can’t see them.
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