It can be hard to find a safe way to get rid of dog waste. Disposing of your dog’s waste the green way can help protect your local watershed from disease and pollution, not to mention save you and your pet from painful infections and hazardous parasites. How does your dog’s waste end up in the watershed? Run off from rain goes into storm drains, most cities do not connect their storm drains to the local waste processing plant. In fact most storm drains empty into rivers where the bacteria, viruses or parasites that are in dog waste can get mixed into the drinking water.
You might be saying, “but the water is treated before it is dispensed as drinking water.” You are correct, however most treatment facilities are not able to eradicate all parasites. Some tenacious parasites like cryptosporidium can live and have the potential to pass right though the treatment center into your drinking water.
In 1993 Milwaukee had an outbreak of cryptosporidium. The cryptosporidium hit the water supply causing more than 400,000 people to get sick. The cryptosporidium was too small to be filtered and too tenacious for the treatment facilities’ parasite-killing practices to kill.
Dog waste is a huge problem in the U.S., the EPA estimates an average dog creates 273 pounds of poop every year with an average of 74 million dogs. That means we produce 10 million tons of dog waste every year, that is enough poop to cover 1,100 football fields five feet deep.
The most common way to get rid of dog waste involves using a plastic bag, which usually ends up in your local landfill along with the poop. Even if the bags are “biodegradable” unless they are composted correctly they will not break down.
So what is a safe way to get rid of dog waste? You flush it, just as you do your own poop. This way it goes to the sewage treatment center a place, which is designed to deal with poop appropriately.
Don’t really want to flush your dog poop! Try a Doggie Doo Drain.
Doggie Doo Drain attaches to your sewer or septic clean out where dog waste is easily deposited directly into the sewer or septic and heads straight to the sewage treatment center.
Thank you so much for this information. It should be published everywhere. I always felt guilty putting my baggies in the trash. But if everyone did this I am sure our waste treatment facilities would be totally overwhelmed.
Great information. We use doggie bags but they end up in trash can then finally landfills. Planning to share this with others. Many people don’t bother picking up after pets. Not everyone will use this doggy doo drain. Public parks, family entertainment centers..such as rv parks and camping grounds should definitly utilize such a system.
I think this is a great way to dispose of doggie poop and keep the environment safe at the same time. I ordered a Doggie Doo Drain though the link provided in the post. It’s set to arrive today. I’ll do a video on installing and using it. Should be fun to see if it’s as easy to install and use as they say it is.
Diane,
I can relate to feeling guilty about putting the plastic bags into the landfill. That’s one of the reasons I started to look into safe ways to dispose of dog waste. The doogie doo drain seems to be the best way. Can’t wait to get mine! I’m going to do a full review once it arrives.
Doggie Doo Drain? Awesome! 🙂
i wish i thought of this idea..the kennel is attatched the house.(size of a 1 bedroom apt) and we are infested with flies inside and outside our house. because of tuff times right now i have to put this purchase on hold till maybe next spring since winter is on its way and flies wont be a problem..but great idea..and cant wait to have no more fly problems.