Can Dog Poop Be Composted?
That’s exactly what a dog park in Ithaca, N.Y. is looking to address.
The park hopes to manage its doggy waste through a pilot composting program, where the feces will be collected in corn-based bags and picked up weekly to be studied by Cayuga Compost.
What has yet to be determined is the end-result of the waste. The hope is that it can be composted once Cayuga studies its composition, which would provide a solution to handling the 20 billion pounds of dog poop generated each year.
Perhaps "presents" from pups like Muñeca will help grow flowers and produce in the future. Photo: Flickr/Orland's World of Photos
The main issue is that excrement contains pathogens and other materials, making it unsafe to use in gardens or to help grow food unless that material is removed.
The plan for Ithaca’s dog waste is that if it can’t be used as compost, it will be used as deep-fill dirt or topsoil.
Regardless of what happens with the dog excrement, by using corn-based bags the park is addressing one area of waste management. These bags are designed to biodegrade in landfills in a short period of time, and they are also compostable unlike petroleum-based bags.
Another option for pet waste is to collect it in flushable bags and put it in the toilet. This way, it will go through the same water sanitation process as human waste, and the bags biodegrade in water.
This isn’t the first time that a dog park has researched composting programs. A Montreal park created its program in 2004, and was still trying to figure out a usable end product four years later.
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The below comments are closed and are listed for historical purposes.
iris
posted on October 1st, 2009 at 9:35 am
Actually, biodegradable items should NOT go in a landfill b/c they break down anaerobically – w/o air – and release methane – a greenhouse gas.
Ken
posted on October 2nd, 2009 at 4:41 am
I live near a national lakeshore. They make a point of requiring dog owners to pick up their waste saying that it causes e-coli problems, etc. I have often wondered whether it is worse for the environment to purchase plastic bags (probably shipped from China), place the plastic bags in a trash container to be picked up by a diesel belching truck and put in a landfill. If I am in a relatively remote area I generally just bury my dog’s waste about 3 inches. Is that a viable alternative? Is that harmful to the environment? My thinking is that there are thousands of animals out there leaving waste every day, waste from my two dogs is not going to affect that significantly.
What about red worms? Is this too big a scale for that?
boom
posted on October 6th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
we use only lamb & rice dog food so there is less “out”; then break down the out into grass as soon as possible. this helps with fly control and our grass uses the “left overs”. what is in their pens is put in dog food bags and sent to the dump. what if anything should we try to change?
Jen
posted on November 3rd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I compost all of our cat poop and litter using our worm bins. We use corn-based litter, and the worms gobble it up. We don’t use the compost from those particular bins for veggies, but it’s fine for flowers.
bobby
posted on March 9th, 2011 at 7:11 am
Dogs eat then they crap! just like anything else…. just train your dog to eat its crap! then.. you do not have to worry about the world ending!!!