Although I don't have a dog, I really appreciate your tips on how to recycle objects as a way to help clean up our environment.
Thanks!

You know, that's a very good idea. I never would have thought of that!

Those with Great Danes and St. Bernards better order the Big Gulp! :)

However, going to the $1 stores and the $1 area in grocery stores so equipped, you can buy boxes of sandwich bags with probably 50-100 bags in them. Cost less, easier to carry and probably easier to use. Then save dropping the 5â per dropping perhaps? Better yet, recycle the lunch bag that probably only had a sandwich or something in it and use that.

Whatever you use, I'm just hoping people use something to clean up after their own dogs. I'm tired of seeing people taking Rover and FooFoo for a walk so they drop their calling cards in my yard instead of theirs. But then again, there's a potential use for a golf club! HERE, YOU FORGOT THIS!!

Can't help recalling Hyacinth Bucket - that's Bou-kay returning something the neighbor left in her yard. How many haven't wanted to do this?

I have 3 dogs so I need a lot of bags. I will save any plastic bag I can get my hands on and reuse them for that task. For instance, when I get a package with those plastic air filled bags for padding, I pop the bag and cut off the end and use those. I try to use only bags that I would otherwise throw away.

I always use my own coffee mug when I get starbucks, but great suggestion, Joyful.

I buy boxes of 50 bio-degradable poop bags at the dollar store and they go into our recycle bin on garbage day. If I use grocery bags they have to go into the garbage and the landfill. Paper coffee cups could go into the green recycle bin but the plastic lid would have to go into another bin with the plastics.

That's why I shop at Walmart - it seems I get one plastic bag for each item I buy - poop bags galore! LOL

We use any type of freebie plastic bag that comes into our home, including both those that stores 'bag' items in, bread wrappers, etc. So far, we've kept up with our three small puppies (usually can get by with one bag for all three and we walk 3 times a day, so usually 3 bags a day).

I love the idea of the bio-degradable ones, but so far haven't brought myself to spend money on something that I get for free and don't have much other use for.

mush, your recycle center actually accepts bags of dog poop? I know it's not on the list of acceptable items for our recycle center, even if in bio-degradable bags. What a great concept though!

And with the recent talk of banning plastic bags *outright* in ON that makes me mad. We do need plastic bags for some type of garbage disposal.

Don't forget the el cheapo produce bags. I use them for kitty litter. Mom saves me her plastic newspaper bags. Kitty litter, celery, the pkg of bacon, all get used in these.

I don't have a dog....but I admire anyone that will look out for the environment! Good job!

The grocery bags get re-used for kitty litter and other stuff. I rarely shop at Wal-Mart these days and my grocery store mainly uses paper bags. I don't have the collections of plastic bags like I used to. I buy the little bags for dog poo. They fit in my pocket better. Since I've started walking the dog for longer distances, I like to have something less bulky.

The school likes to use some recycle items for art projects. I save bottle caps and lids, containers and other pieces of extraneous plastic for them.

I also buy the biodegradable doggie bags for our walks and use a poo composter for her yard bombs. Our Safeway bags are so cheaply made, they usually have holes in the bottom, not what I want to use to scoop poo with! I try to not bring home too many plastic bags anymore but they are handy at times.

A used coffee cup would certainly be useful in a pinch (no pun intended!)

Yes, Jasdip, I use those produce bags, too.

I'm going to have to look into those recyclable one, Mush, but I can't imagine our recycling company taking poop if they won't even take egg cartons!

Great idea Joyful! I use bags for kitty litter and dog walks. I try and use cloth bags at the store unless I am low on bags which isn't often. There was a news article not long ago saying as lot of the reusable cloth bags (Publix was mentioned) have lead in them.

My daily newspaper is delivered in a long plastic bag. I use (re-use?) it as a pet pooper scooper. I also use grocery plastic bags to line all the wastebaskets in my home. One day my husband discovered my stash of plastic bags under the sink and threw them all out. I was stuck having to actually purchase garbage bags.

Many of the plastic bags are sourced from petroleum.

You may recall that there was a serious mess a few months ago because an oil well blew out in the Caribbean. While many were running around like chickens with heads cut off, looking for someone/thing/agency to blame for it ...

... aren't we all to blame, when you get right down to it?

We should contact makers of plastic bags carrying print who have neglected to print a recycling logo, with the number of the type of plastic which was used, so that it can be recycled - the various kinds of plastic can't be mixed for reuse.

In our area, I think that they won't accept the plastic-coated coffee take-out cups for recycling - no shi!.

ole joyful ... who, dogsitting the other day, didn't need either a leash or a scooper, as the female canine (you don't want to hear the accurate title) loves to run wherever she pleases on the farm

Up here in Canada (maybe just Alberta, not sure) the government wants to add a tax to paper cups used at Starbucks, Tim Hortons, etc., to lower the amount of paper cups being thrown in our garbage dumps and to get people using their travel mugs more often. I think it's a fantastic idea.

Don't get me started on the names we get called for charging an entire nickle for a bag at work. OMG, two men threw hissy fits today. Sorry, but it's normal in Europe to pay for bags or to bring your own. Superstore has always charged for bags. Rona charges for them. Chapters charges for them. Our store donates every single penny to Cancer research.

Okay, that went totally off topic....

going back to my corner now.

Oh, and sorry, but putting coffee cups of dog poop in the recycling bins is disgusting. Humans have to go through the recycling to sort it at the plant here in Calgary. Makes me more than happy I didn't get an interview with them when I was laid off. I would have quit on the spot.

The poop bags here go into the food scrap recycle bin.(don't ask me why) All food scraps, poop bags, paper Coffee cups and the paper trays go in this bin. Any other Paper and plastic have their own separate bins. We put out a minimum of 4 bins every week and 1 bag of garbage. Soon they will start charging us for any garbage bags we put out. Recycling will be free.
At first I hated having to sort everything. Garbage day was a nightmare each week. But now it's second nature, and I really like having the food scrap bin. My garbage never smells and it's stopped the animals from raiding it.

It has been my impression that those plastic-coated coffee cups aren't recyclable - that they go into garbage.

So, if they have a non-liquid (partail) filling ... no big deal!

Some time ago, I picked up some Wendys packaging near their store and, on my return walk, dropped in to the store, telling the service person that I'd found some of their stuff on the street and had brought it back for them to take care of.

The lady, with latex gloves on her hands, said that I should take them outside and put them into the garbage.

I told her that I didn't propose to take care of their problem for them, that it had originated at that counter and it was to that counter that I'd returned it.

She said that if she took it, she'd have to wash her hands.

I told her that if I placed it on the counter ... she'd have to wash the counter, too.

She was not pleased with me.

I should have reminded her that if there were no printing on the materials, I'd not have known their origin. And that she may have noted that their printed advertising on the goods, while lying on the ground, was large enough to be read by people walkiing by ... so it continued to advertise for them.

Maybe next time.

ole joyful

"Can't help recalling Hyacinth Bucket - that's Bou-kay returning something the neighbor left in her yard. How many haven't wanted to do this?"

I've done it!! Our former next-door neighbor (a really nice guy, actually), had two dogs. There's a very wide patch of lawn between the neighbor's driveway and ours, but there is also a definite property line through that area. Anyway, neighbor's dogs would be let out front to do their business, and they ALWAYS did it on the grass right next to our driveway, and sometimes ON the driveway.

I finally got so tired of it that I went out there late one night with one of Hubs' old golf clubs and whacked those piles right back over to the neighbor's side. Several of those piles even hit the neighbor's garage door... Never had piles on our side of the lawn after that.

ROFL Bravo lindsey_ca! That's better than having to borrow a monkey to fling feces!

I wouldn't have that kind of accuracy. I have enough trouble putting the ball through the clown's mouth at mini golf.

I wasn't concerned with accuracy at that point in time -- just so long as the stuff ended up on the neighbor's property, I was satisfied. Hearing the thunks as some of the piles hit the garage door was sort of a shock! :-)

I once took a shovel and gathered all the dog bombs from my front lawn and put them in front of a neighbor's front door. After that they started cleaning up after their dog.

You guys are hilarious!! I'm just glad I never take the dogs out without a couple of bags in my pockets!! LOL I always think "what inconsiderate neighbors" when I see where someone has let their dog do his business and not picked up after him. How hard is it, anyway. Geeesh!

The dog pound is very quick here to pick up dogs that are off leash and wandering through the neighbourhood. And the fines are high if your dog does his business and you don't clean it up. Our next door neighbours have had dogs off and on for the 16 years we've been their neighbours. Never once have their dogs done anything in my yard. It's really rare to see dogs out of their yards here.

Now cats............ that's a whole other story. Don't even get me started on people who allow their cats to go outside. We have 3 who have never been outside cats. Two of them can sit in the doorway with the door wide open and will not step a foot outside. It can be done.

I am glad I don't live in town.

Sue

I wish someone would explain to me how you can keep a litter box in your house without it stinking. I can smell them if there is one in the house, anyone's house. I rescued a cat from the humane society, but I couldn't stand the litter box stink. I was almost in tears when I returned the cat. It's not only the litter box, but where do you put the stuff when you remove it from the box. My garage smelled like an out house.

Vala, we installed a cat door leading from our indoor laundry room to the garage and the litter box is in the garage. We can't smell a thing, and I too am sensitive to cat boxes. When I clean out the litter box, I put the waste in a plastic bag, tie it shut and then put it in the outdoor garbage bins (they sit on on the side of our house, not IN the garage).

Blessings,
Haley

You clean the liter box daily. And I would rather have the cats poop inside my house in a liter box, rather than in my next door neighbours flower beds, where she digs in the dirt with her bare hands. There's nothing more disgusting than that. Besides, our cats have a good long life expectancy. I know they won't be run over by a car.

I check the litter box every time she went in there and cleaned or stirred it what ever it needed. When I was younger, I had a litter box until they were old enough to go out. I can't leave my trash container outside our home, it has to be in the garage. I did think later of putting the litter box in the garage, but I don't want that to stink either. I have been in to many garages sales that smelled. I found a plastic box that I put bags of waste in and closed it tight. That helped. I may try it again. I sure miss having a cat and I kept all the supplies. Later I thought maybe I changed her diet to fast and made her gassy.

Vala, if you get the kind of cat litter that clumps when something wet gets into it, that helps. Just clean out the clumps (and solid waste) daily, and it shouldn't smell.

This is gatting to be quite educational!

ole joyful

If you have a large dog ...

... maybe get an "extra large" coffee to take-out.

Careful, though - both pet-owning and coffee are addictive, I hear.

ole joyful

So Joyful, when you get the Big Gulp for the Great Dane, finish off the 64 oz of coffee, fill the cup with the puppy pancakes, what do you do when you need to recycle the coffee? :)

Get Ever Clean cat litter! It's more expensive up-front but it lasts longer cause you never have to empty the entire thing. It clumps beautifully and eliminates all odor. I have 3 indoor cats in a 1000 square foot apartment and I NEVER smell the litter, even right after a cat uses it. People always comment that that they don't smell cat at all when they are here.

It's worth every penny and I actually save a lot of money over the Tidy Cat or whatever brand I was using before because I'd frequently have to dump the entire box because it would get gross and saturated. Ever Clean never really gets gross and I've never had to dump the whole box out. Just scoop and put a little more in every few days.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ever Clean

Come on, Cynic ...

... I thought that you'd come to know me better, by now ...

... I'm way too frugal to spring for either a 64 oz. coffee (well, not all at one time) ...

... or a Great Dane!!

Can you imagine the pile o' pellets that pooch'd put away??

ole joyfilled

vala55, I second what chi83 suggested--Ever Clean is the best litter at eliminating odors (that I've used for our cats). We use the ES (extra strength) since it is made for multi-cat households (have/have had 2 cats). Other litters we'd tried; Pet Gold (sold at Petco), Tidy Cat (w/ w/out crystals), and prob a few others, just did not do a good job at eliminating odors. We NEVER smell cat pee with the Ever Clean. If one of the cats has just pooped, you will prob smell that (if you walk into the room with the litter box, not throughout the house), but the Ever Clean usually eliminates that smell fairly quickly. We scoop twice a day (though sometimes once a day), so the box might not smell clean if it's "full" but again, that's only if you lift off the lid and stand right over the box (we use a covered Booda dome, which might help with containing any unabsorbed odor).

Even our non-cat owning/loving friends have commented on the fact that our house NEVER smells like cat, that you wouldn't know we had cats if you didn't see them.

The only gripe I have, is that boxes of the unscented version are sometimes plenty scented/perfumed, and our cats then smell like perfume after using the litter box.

For those of you with a compost pile at home, you can add the poo there ...

... rinse out the cup with the garden hose, if you're short of them ...

... and have a scooper carrier available for the next trip.

If you run out of coffee cups (which are, as far as I've been able to find out, just garbage) ...

... if you buy your eggs in cartons, you might be able to use them.

Sorry, though - I haven't a suggestion as to what to use as the "snowplow".

Now ... that "cleaning up after cat" game ...

... is a a whole other story!

Thanks for the advice offered here, folks.

It's a poor day when one doesn't learn *sumthin*!

ole joyful

P.S. Simpler to buy a farm ... and let the pets run freely: after all, that's their normal habit, isn't it? ...

... and avoid all of these problems?

o j

For those of you with a compost pile at home, you can add the poo there ...

... rinse out the cup with the garden hose, if you're short of them ...

... and have a scooper carrier available for the next trip.

If you run out of coffee cups (which are, as far as I've been able to find out, just garbage) ...

... if you buy your eggs in cartons, you might be able to use them.

Sorry, though - I haven't a suggestion as to what to use as the "snowplow".

Now ... that "cleaning up after cat" game ...

... is a a whole other story!

Thanks for the advice offered here, folks.

It's a poor day when one doesn't learn *sumthin*!

ole joyful

P.S. Simpler to buy a farm ... and let the pets run freely: after all, that's their normal habit, isn't it? ...

... and avoid all of these problems?

o j