I expect that your human, like mine, goes around with a little bundle of plastic bags in their pocket, as they are responsible people and always take care to pick up your poop.
But in recent years our humans (as well as canines with a scientific bent) will surely have been reading about all the environmental problems caused by plastic, even the supposedly biodegradable kind, and worrying that those little plastic bags will end up in the tummy of a whale.
A couple of weeks ago Gail took me for a short walk in the beautiful and pristine environment of the Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve.
At the start of the footpath we noticed this new 'dog stop', which turned out to be a dispenser for 'nature-friendly poop scoops' made out of paper and cardboard.
Gail took one of these scoops and put it in her pocket. She did not use it that day because (1) I had already done my morning poop and (2) The instructions looked a bit complicated and she felt it would be better to take the bag home and make sure she was unfolding and re-folding the right bits, pointing out that no-one wants to walk along with dog poop on the outside of the poop scoop, however environmentally friendly it is...
Well a couple of days ago, feeling confident with the origami aspects of the eco-scoop, Gail decided to try it out on our morning park walk.
Most considerately, I waited until no-one else was around before evacuating, so Gail could take of photo of the poop-scooping action for this blog without attracting the wrong sort of interest.
Operation successfully executed (aside from a small smear on the handle...) the bag was duly deposited in a nearby bin.
I would like to report that henceforth Gail will always be using this type of poop scoop, but when she looked up the website, www.poopscoop.biz, she discovered that one box of 240 scoops costs £36.47 - that's about 10 times more than the biodegradable plastic bags she normally buys. Also, Gail noted that the paper/cardboard bags are rather unwieldy and do not fit easily into one's pocket. And she's not sure how well they would hold up in the rain.
So we are still looking for the nature-friendly (and wallet-friendly) solution to the poop scoop issue.
Ideas, anyone?
Happy Nature Friday and thanks once again to our friends Arty, Jakey and Rosy for hosting this blog hop.
