At the surface level, dog poop seems to be a funny topic that we can all get a good laugh out of. While many people enjoy the humor surrounding it, not many realize the serious implications of undisposed dog feces. For whatever reason, proper dog waste disposal is not as widely practiced as you may think, with up to 40% of dog owners stating they do not clean up after their furry friends. What these individuals don’t realize are the dangerous environmental consequences that arise from undisposed dog poop. Our mission is to bring awareness to this issue while facilitating, normalizing, and promoting proper dog waste disposal. Below you can see some of the factors that make orphaned dog waste a particulary crappy situation.
Learning that dog poop carries a suite of bacteria is probably not much of a news flash. However, when we look at the actual statistics of how serious this bacteria can get, we can quickly see why unattended dog feces can be extremely problematic.
1g of dog poop can contain 23 MILLION fecal coliform bacteria, a contributor of kidney disease.
Dog waste is obviously attributable to alot of the bacteria we experience every day. Undisposed dog poop can cause an array of dangerous and sometimes deadly consequences. For starters, it contains a plethora of harmful bacteria such as E. Coli, Salmonella, and Campylobacter. These bacteria can cause a wide range of symptoms including fever, nausea, diarrhea, and even death in some cases. On an even more frightening note, scientists in Southern Italy were able to isolate multiple antibiotic resistant strains of Enterococci and Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in canine fecal samples.
While its hard to argue that dog feces doesn’t carry a host of bacterial issues, many people will make the assumption that dog waste and its resulting effects are a simple fact of life with no tangible solution. When we look at waste disposal statistics, however, it’s clear to see that this is an issue that can be easily mitigated.
Bacteria from 100 dogs can create a 20 mile radius of unswimmable and undrinkable water.
When we look at the amount of pet dogs in America with the amount of waste they produce, the issue of undisposed dog feces gets alot more serious. According to the American Pet Products Association, there are more than 77 million dogs currently residing in the United States. On a daily basis, they each produce about .75 pounds of waste, which equates to around 57 million pounds daily, and over 10 million tons annually. To put this in perspective, you’d need over 250 thousand semi-trucks to contain all the waste generated by American dogs annually. If you placed these trucks in a single file line, they would span 3,800 miles, or the distance between Boston and Seattle. Considering the estimate that only around 60% of dog owners clean up after their companions, it becomes extremely clear that something must be done to combat this massive unchecked production of waste.
While the troubling issue of undisposed dog waste can’t be solved overnight, we plan to promote, normalize, incentivize, and facilitate proper dog waste disposal. If we can help increase dog waste removal by 1%, we would help remove over 40,000 tons of dog waste each year in America alone.
Our mobile application will incentive and normalize proper dog waste disposal by allowing users to send P2P payments in exchange for dog waste removal. We plan for this mobile application to create communities that care for the integrity of their parks and environment, mainstreaming proper disposal practices. In order to stimulate application usage, we will inject portions of our operations & development fund to directly compensate users for dog waste removal.
We plan to partner with industry leaders to assist in large scale park cleanup efforts and help spread the word of proper disposal practices. By partnering with like minded companies, we are confident that waste disposal will become increasingly relevant in the communities we serve. Through these partnerships, we will educate community members on the importance of proper waste disposal as well as its easy implementation through our mobile application.
Portions of operation and development funds will be allocated to charitable efforts at predetermined fund milestones. The majority of these contributions will go towards equipment improvements for local dog parks, increasing the accessibility of cleaning supplies. At every milestone we will select a new dog park through an application process, voted on by the Cockapoo community.
As you can see, undisposed dog waste has become a big issue. This is why we’ve begun a campaign to bring awareness to proper cleaning practices. We also plan on making donations to add more dog waste disposal bins around cities that need them the most, in conjunction with donations to professional cleaning services such as Poop911 that can dramatically cut down on the uncleaned dog waste in areas of high population density. Left unchecked, we may all find ourselves in a big pile of crap.
Tell us why your local dog park should be next on our cleanup list!
Bayfront Park- Miami, FL
Tell us why your local dog park should be next on our cleanup list!
Bayfront Park- Miami, FL