For dog owners across the city, it's a familiar routine: Stand around while your canine poops, try not to stare lest someone walk by and think you're a weirdo, lean over with a plastic bag to pick up the goods, and then find the nearest trash bin to dispose of Precious's leavings. According to the Chronicle, however, that could all be about to change. Perhaps sick of letting all that good stuff go to waste, officials have launched a program to encourage the environmentally conscious to compost what was once considered mere garbage — likely ensuring a much richer terroir for our Napa and Sonoma vintner friends.
The program kicked off this past weekend in Potrero's Star King Open Space, and is remarkable for its straightforwardness. A company called BioBags is providing park-goers with compostable dog bags, a specialized receptacle, and a pickup service to haul away the future-fertilizer.
“We tried to start this dog waste collection initiative at Duboce Park and BioBag even offered to pay the cost for the first year but the city department in charge of the park would not allow it,” BioBag vice president of market development Mark Williams told the Chronicle. “So we’re happy the folks at the Starr King Open Space took us up on our offer to demonstrate this is an effective way to reduce landfill for Zero Waste objectives.”
Company officials told the paper that they believe this is the first such program in California, and that they hope to expand it to parks across San Francisco. With an estimated 120,000 dogs in the city, that's a lot of poop.
And, with the recent news that roughly half of the contents of our city's black bins are actually compostable or recyclable, the latest effort will helpfully get us a bit closer to the goal of zero waste by 2020. Or, at the very least, means less poop to step in at our city's parks.
Related: Is Your Dog Worse For The Environment Than Driving A Car?
