If you live in a metro area and take your dog on regular walks, you also have to pick up their poop (as all responsible pet parents do). When you don’t have a shovel and lots of space to bury excess waste, poop bags are the only way to go.
However, many dog poop bags are made of plastic, which can be harmful to the environment and even toxic when ingested by animals. What if there was an alternative that was better for the environment? Turns out — there is!
Environmentally friendly poop bags for dogs are more popular than ever. In fact, Wild One offers environmentally friendly, biodegradable poop bags for pet parents just like yourself.
Let’s take a closer look at these eco-friendly poop bags and explore why you might want to switch to them yourself.
What Are Eco-Friendly Poop Bags?
They’re exactly what they sound like: poop bags that are meant to be biodegradable, meaning that the natural bacteria and fungi in the environment will break down the bags (and the feces inside).
This is much better for the environment overall. Traditional plastic bags take a very long time to degrade, which can tragically poison or damage the environment. Furthermore, traditional plastic poop bags for dogs cannot be flushed or disposed of in compost bins.
In contrast, eco-friendly poop bags for dogs can be broken down in a matter of days or weeks. The material used to make the poop bags returns to the environment and is recycled in nature.
Because eco-friendly poop bags are biodegradable, they can also be disposed of in a greater number of ways. You don’t have to simply throw them away (where they end up in a landfill). Eco-friendly poop bags are the most responsible and eco-conscious choice for pet parents like you, especially if you live in a big metro area where you can’t bury your dog’s poop in your backyard or front yard.
How Do Wild One’s Poop Bags Work?
Wild One’s Eco-Friendly Dog Poop Bags are designed to be eco-friendly yet sturdy and easy to use from start to finish. They’re made with a specialized cornstarch blend, ensuring that every ingredient in their composition is biodegradable and easy for the environment to recycle.
The plant-based starch blend also doesn’t smell and is durable enough to keep your dog’s waste contained on its way to its final destination. This way, you don’t have to worry about an unexpected mess after you’ve collected your dog’s poop.
Best of all, you can get plenty of dog poop bags for your needs with a single purchase. Each buy gets you 60 bags spread across six rolls of 10 bags each. You can load those rolls into our Poop Bag Carrier for even easier transportation and hands-free storage while on a walk or an extended hike.
Try a Poop Bag Subscription
We’ve gone the extra mile and tried to make things even easier for pet parents like you by offering a dog poop bag subscription. You’ll need more eco-friendly poop bags eventually, so why not set up a subscription and get them sent straight to your door on a regular basis?
If you’ve ever been out and about and realized you didn’t have a poop bag and then had to ask a stranger for a bag, you know how not-fun that is. Even better, by subscribing, you'll save up to 5% on any recurring orders. In this way, you can save extra money by subscribing to regular poop bag deliveries. You can cancel your submission at any time if you build up enough of them for a while, too.
Are Eco-Friendly Poop Bags Really Good for the Environment?
They can be, but you have to carefully investigate what's used in an eco-friendly poop bag before assuming it will really be environmentally friendly.
Wild One’s poop bags are made with a cornstarch blend, so there are no worries about excess oils or other toxic chemicals getting into groundwater or poisoning nearby plants. That said, some environmentally friendly poop bags don't degrade very quickly or safely, according to the ASTM International Standards, which explores just how biodegradable plastic materials are.
That said, most eco-friendly poop bags really are good choices for the environment at large. Because they are easier to degrade, they don’t end up in landfills (if you dispose of them properly), and they don’t prevent the environment from recycling its nutrients.
How To Use Eco-Friendly Poop Bags Wisely
If you really want to do your part for the environment and maximize the eco-friendliness of your poop bags, you’ll dispose of them in wise ways.
Don’t Throw Them Away
Firstly, never throw an eco-friendly poop bag away in a regular trash can. Why? Simply put, if you put a biodegradable poop bag in a trashcan, it’ll just end up in a landfill with other non-degradable garbage. While the poop bag will eventually degrade in theory, when surrounded by hard plastics and other non-biodegradable materials, this process will really slow down.
On top of that, throwing a poop bag into the garbage makes it more likely that the bag will split and smear waste on the inside of the can. No one wants to smell that or clean it up.
Instead, you should follow one of the below three disposal methods, which will allow the poop bags to degrade as they are intended by their makers.
Bury Them
You can always bury your biodegradable poop bags in your backyard or front yard, provided that you actually own the property and have enough space. Whenever you bury a poop bag, you should do so five inches below ground and far away from any plants. This will prevent the toxins in the poop from affecting plant health until they are properly dispersed and recycled by bacteria in nature.
Flush Them
Alternatively, you can flush eco-friendly poop bags down the toilet. Note that this doesn’t apply to all biodegradable poop bags. Only some don’t stand a chance of clogging up your toilet and causing a huge mess later down the road.
Furthermore, check with your apartment company or plumbing company before flushing poop bags down the toilet. They might have rules against this even if your poop bags are truly biodegradable, just to be safe, or because they don’t trust the apartment complex’s residents.
Place Them in a Compost Bin
The best way to dispose of biodegradable doggie poop bags is to put them in a compost bin. The compost bin should be set aside for dog poop bags specifically (i.e., don’t put the poop bags in the same compost bin as you put other organic waste, like vegetable parts or fruit peels).
The compost bin can then be used for gardening or for enriching the soil of your yard. This is a great solution for homeowners or those who just want to dispose of dog waste as properly as possible.
Put Them in a Recycling Bin
As a last resort, you can sometimes throw biodegradable dog poop bags in a green recyclable waste can if your neighborhood has one. But it's a good idea to double-check with your recycling center's policies. Make sure that they accept dog poop bags marked as biodegradable before chucking them into the bins over and over.
Of course, you should never put biodegradable poop bags in a regular recycling bin with glass, plastic, and other recyclable materials.
What if You Don’t Have These Options?
If you live in the heart of a city or in an apartment complex, you may not have any of these options available to you. In that case, it’s still a good idea to use recyclable poop bags.
Even if those bags end up in landfills, they will still degrade much more quickly than other plastic poop bags, which only contribute to the environmental toxicity we see with increasing frequency around the world.
Love Dogs, Love the Planet
As you can see, there’s no reason not to switch to eco-friendly poop bags if you have to use them in the first place. You can do your part for the environment and make sure that your dog’s waste is picked up properly by making the switch today, especially if you use our recurring subscription option.
Plus, Wild One offers additional accessories and tools for your daily walks and doggie doo-doo disposal needs. Check out our Poop Bag Carrier, for example. See this and other quality dog tools and pet parent solutions at our online website today!
Sources:
Standards for Biodegradable Plastics | ASTM
How Long Does It Take Garbage to Decompose? | Environment.about.com