Diminishing Fido's Footprint

I worry a lot about dog waste. At least twice a day, when I take the big guy out. How to wrap it (paper or plastic?) and where to dispose it. With a reported 20 billion pounds of dog waste entering landfills annually prepped for mummification in individual non-degradable plastic bags, what's a conscientious dog owner to do?

The average dog generates 274 pounds of waste a year. With 73 million pet dogs living in the United States, that adds up to an astounding 20 billion pounds annually. Some cities, however, are finding creative approaches to divert that waste from the, er, waste stream.

In Europe, converting biomass like animal waste and food scraps into electricity has been common practice for over twenty years. In fact, the world's largest biomass power plant opened last year in the Netherlands with the capability of turning 440,000 tons of chicken waste into 270 million kilowatt hours. A farmer in Pennsylvania converts his animal waste into an annual income of $200,000 in electricity savings or sales.

Dog owners in Ithaca, N.Y. banded together several years ago to create a dog waste composting facility. Similar to Canadian programs in Vancouver and Montreal. Can something like this happen in a larger metropolis like New York City (with a population upwards of one and a half million dogs)? Probably only if cost isn't a factor. The Ithaca program has an annual price tag of $6,000. Even a green bellwether city like San Francisco abandoned a three-year-old pilot plan of opening a methane conversion facility because of the hefty price tag.

For right now, flushing waste down the toilet may be the only option for most Americans since it can be processed in the sewage system. Of course, this only works in an ideal poop scenario where all particles can be flushed down, which may not be the case for dogs who dine on bones or other densely structured foods or toys. And the prospect of carrying dog waste home probably isn't too appealing for a lot of pet owners.

Sources
http://www.ecoseed.org/en/general-green-news/features/in-depth/4779
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/ithacas-pioneers-of-dog-was...
http://recology.com/press_room/articles/article_chroniclepoop.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/pets/detail?blogid=48&entry_id=26231