Community well-positioned to mitigate dog waste problem

By Lethbridge Herald on May 23, 2023.

Editor:

Lethbridge has approximately ten thousand dogs who produce a thousand tonnes of poop a year. Where does all this poop end up? Since dogs don’t use flush toilets like humans do, the large majority of poop is scooped up from backyards, boulevards or public green spaces by pet owners and deposited in plastic bags in waste bins whose contents are destined for the municipal landfill. Decomposition of poop buried in the landfill is slow in the absence of oxygen and there is prolonged release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The plastic bags remain intact for many years. Plastics are now listed as toxic in federal legislation because of their potential harmful effect on the environment. Policies and programs are being implemented across Canada to reduce single-use plastic items. 

Off-leash dog parks tend to be places where some of the poop is left un-scooped even though the City of Lethbridge maintains doggie bag dispensers and supplies approximately 600,000 doggie bags per year. High concentration of abandoned poop poses health risk to users of these areas (people, pets and wildlife) and there is potential contamination of surface water, including the Oldman River, during snowmelt and rainfall events. Volunteer doggy doo-doo pick-up events are occasionally organized to address this problem and to remind dog walkers of the municipal by-law requiring removal of defecates from public spaces.

 This year cleanups are planned today at Scenic Drive Dog Park and Thursday at Park n Bark. For more information or to volunteer visit http://www.lethbridge.ca/doggydoodoocrew. 

Dog poop, like human and livestock manure and other organic material, can be composted, generating energy in the process and producing fertilizer for plant growth. However, the recently launched curbside organics program in Lethbridge does not accept pet waste in green carts. This is because plastic bags are mixed in with the poop and there is a high cost to separating out the plastic, either by mechanical means or human effort. Some communities in Alberta, including Calgary and Red Deer, allow plastic bags that are ‘certified compostable’ in their organics collection but have found screening out of the plastic is required because biodegradation times are longer than for food and yard waste. 

Pets enrich the lives of many Lethbridge residents and that is unlikely to change, hence we can expect the annual amount of dog poop to increase with our population. 

 What options might be available to reduce dog poop and associated plastic bags in our landfill? The solution for Lethbridge could be multi-faceted. 

– Encourage use of doggie bags made of plant material that are readily compostable. Supplying them in City and community doggie bag dispensers would be an important step. 

– Collect and treat dog poop separate from other waste. Poop-only waste receptacles in urban dog parks might be tried as a pilot project.

 In Waterloo and Guelph in-ground waste containment systems have been installed and the contents, including certified compostable poop bags, are regularly collected and composted with other organics producing energy in the process. 

– Install a small anaerobic digester in a dog park in Lethbridge, as has been done in the UK, to demonstrate how methane produced by microbial break-down of dog poop can be used to fuel a gas light. On a larger scale, consider an arrangement with operators of a local biogas plant in Lethbridge for anaerobic digestion of dog poop collected throughout the city and production of renewable energy. 

– Encourage diversion of dog poop to the wastewater treatment plant. Metro Vancouver encourages residents at home to flush dog poop (without the bag) in the toilet. At municipal dog parks dog waste is collected in separate bins and a private company contracted to regularly empty the bins, remove the plastic from the waste, and deposit the poop at the wastewater treatment plant. 

With some resourcefulness and commitment our community is well positioned to mitigate issues of dog waste and put all this poop to good use.

Marissa Crosswhite, Cheryl Bradley, Braum Barber and Kathleen Sheppard

SAGE and Environment Lethbridge