Transforming Pet Waste: An Environmental Awakening for Pet Parents with Rose Seemann

We're getting our hands dirty, literally, as we discuss the seldom explored but critical topic of pet waste and its environmental impact. I chat with  Rose Seemann author of Pet Poo Pocket Guide and Co founder of Enviro Pet Waste  a non profit which  provides information to help dog and cat owners, communities, businesses and government to reduce the carbon  paw print of our pets.  Rose's goal is to educate and guide pet owners in the safe and responsible up-cycling of their dogs' and cats' waste. The environmental impact of our beloved pets is much greater than most may realize,


Useful Links:
ASTM 6400 Compostable Poop Bags
Survey: Dog Poop - Environment & Human Health
Pet Poo Pocket Guide
Enviro Waste - https://www.epwn.org/
Bokashi Composting

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Dogs make the best companions for humans. This podcast aims to help make humans better companions for their dogs. Welcome to the Baroo Podcast, a modern lifestyle podcast for dogs and their people. I'm your host, charlotte Bain. I've been caring for other people's dogs for more than 15 years and, while I've learned a lot in my career, I definitely don't know at all. So I've collected an ever-evolving roster of amazing dog people and I learn new things from them all the time. Hi you guys. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the Baroo Podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:45

In today's chat, I talk about every pet parent's favorite subject dog poop. I'm chatting with Rose Seaman, author of Pet Poo Pocket Guide and co-founder of Enviro Pet Waste, a non-profit which provides information to help dog and cat owners, communities, businesses and government to reduce the carbon footprint of our pets. Rose's goal is to educate and guide pet owners in the safe and responsible upcycling of their dogs and cats' waste. The environmental impact of our beloved pets, I think, is much greater than most people may realize, so let's jump into the chat. Hi, rose. Rose or Rose or Rose Mary.

Speaker 2: 1:27

I'm Rose, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:29

I just wanted to jump in and really talk about how we can be more mindful pet parents when it comes to our dogs' waste, because I know it can be a huge problem, bigger than I think a lot of people realize. Thank you, rose, you for jumping on and chatting with me. I really appreciate it. You have founded the Enviro Pet Waste Network, correct.

Speaker 2: 1:50

Yeah, I'm a co-founder with a woman in Australia named Ruth Miller.

Speaker 1: 1:54

Oh, fantastic, and can you tell me a little bit about what the Enviro Pet Waste Network aims to achieve and what their vision is and what you guys actually do?

Speaker 2: 2:05

Yeah, we provide resources for people, communities and individuals that want to sustainably manage pet waste and that's dog and cat waste, mainly because that's the huge bulk of it and we also connect people who are doing it successfully with people who are working on it and giving them ideas of who's doing it and how they manage to do it.

Speaker 1: 2:29

Great, that's great. I wrote an article for my blog quite a while back on the best way to dispose of your dog's poop and I found it very confusing. When I was doing the research, I was kind of a more overwhelmed writing that blog post than I thought I was going to be. And so, and it turns out, I was reading recently that our dog's waste like accumulation of our dog's waste is somewhere around like 10 million tons per year, just in the. United States is that correct.

Speaker 2: 2:59

That's about right, and it's a 109 football fields potentially deep every year. That includes the end. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: 3:10

So I think a lot of people don't really think about that, Even if we're doing like what I do is I use a compostable poop bag, but I still don't feel like I'm doing. It turns out it's complicated on what poop bag. Even if you're using a compostable poop bag, what poop bag you're supposed to be using, and I feel like I'm doing the best that I can, but I know it's not enough because it's a huge. There's such a huge environmental impact from our dog. So how, as pet parents, can we be more mindful to reduce the environmental impact of our pets and if you have any statistics or anything that you want to share which would make people understand a little bit more on why it's such a huge issue.

Speaker 2: 3:55

Okay, it's a huge issue because, of course, dog waste pollutes water. Sometimes there are dog parks near reservoirs and they have to stop people swimming there and of course, it's a few things. That gets on your shoes, it gets in the house. It's something that if you leave it there, it's bad. If you throw it in the trash it goes in a landfill and it emits methane. Probably the first things that someone can do is make sure that they're using compostable bags, even if it's going in the trash, and support ASTM 6400 certified compostable bags not biodegradable. Biodegradable only means that the plastic's going to break up into tiny little pieces and get in the atmosphere. But if it's certified compostable, with the certified compostable symbol on it, then it'll actually degrade. If it's taken to a compost facility and even if it isn't your model and good behavior, you're not using plastic and you're actually helping to support the companies that make 100% compostable bags and as you do that, that'll cut down on bags that are plastic and also healthy industry and it'll drive down the prices of compostable bags.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Right because they're not cheap. No, they're definitely the most expensive out of the bags. So if you're taking, so if you use a compostable bag, is that even going to? If it still ends up going to a landfill, what happens next?

Speaker 2: 5:32

It just sits there.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Just sits there like everything else.

Speaker 2: 5:35

Yeah, just like if you're in plastic or if it's in paper or whatever. It sits there and eventually it emits methane, and they all do. And plastic sits there and doesn't ever do anything. So as long as it's going to a landfill, you're just filling up the landfill. 14 to 18% of the methane in the air is coming from landfills, so the best that you can do is not use compostable bags instead of plastic. In any case.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Okay so, and there are some other ways that we can be mindful, I know you, can you know if you have a yard? I mean there's so many different. I mean I live in an urban, a busy urban setting, so I don't have access to a yard. The thought of, like, flushing the dog poop down the septic, down the toilet, is complicated, but I know there's many different ways, as a pet owners, that you can dress, taking care of your dog's waste, depending on your circumstances. Do you want to go through some of those because you know we all live differently.

Speaker 2: 6:38

So Sure, I have a book actually that's called the PEPPOO Pocket Guide and it's backwards the PEPPOO Pocket Guide.

Speaker 2: 6:46

I love it and it's got eight different ways to do it, depending on where you are, and on our website, in fact, there's a like a flow chart that said are you in an apartment or are you in a house, yes or no? And if you go into epwinorg and go into households to find out how a household can handle it not a community, but a household then it'll give you instructions. There are many ways. For instance, if you're in an apartment, right there is something you can do.

Speaker 2: 7:19

You could use vermicompost. You could have work. If you don't mind having work, it's on Deers Sink, but you can do it. And there's also a thing called Bokashi and you know you can do that.

Speaker 1: 7:38

And can you go a little bit into detail on what Bokashi is? It's a different form of Bokashi.

Speaker 2: 7:43

Bokashi is a way it's ancient Asian way to disintegrate things. It decomposes everything, it literally mummifies it until it just kind of falls into disrepair. And if you look up Bokashi online, you can find that you can find these things called EM's essential microbes, and you can buy them in a bottle and you can inoculate grain and make it into Bokashi mix. Or you can buy the Bokashi mix but you sprinkle it on things and it's great on everything. You sprinkle it on stuff and it takes a while but it disintegrates and it's all. All of this is fairly complicated. The easiest way is, if you have a yard, you can compost it, you can put in a biodegester and all that. But the way that that is the solution is to get a community to let you put it in the green bins with a food scrap.

Speaker 2: 8:41

Yes, okay, and you do that all over Canada they do Okay.

Speaker 2: 8:47

So this is the area, and there are a couple of places in New England that will let you bring it to a compost place and they'll compost it. But the United States is way far behind in terms of allowing for that. But that's. That's the best and easiest way. If you have a yard, you can just compost it, or you can just let it sit for a long time, keep throwing seed compost on it and you don't turn it. Eventually It'll turn into a compost. The only thing is don't use it on vegetable gardens.

Speaker 1: 9:21

I was going to say you, you have to be separate, right. It has to be far away from like your food supply, right.

Speaker 2: 9:27

Well, it doesn't have to be far away. But if you're composting it with your food scraps and you only have one pile, only use that on landscaping. And if you're if you're making a pile of compost for an edible garden, you have to do that way separately. And you can do cat waste like this too. You can compost it, and there are places where you can flush it. Dog waste there are places where they allow that. In Vancouver they allow it, lots of places in Australia and the problem with flushing it is that water treatment plants don't want all that dog waste coming in. It's too much, it's over. It isn't so much that it's worse than human poop. It's that the volume would makes them expand and is very expensive for them to expand. So they don't want that in there.

Speaker 1: 10:22

So why can I ask why you can't just put it in the green garden bin? In many urban settings we are just got recycling in my building in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2: 10:35

Okay.

Speaker 1: 10:35

Perfectly honest. Yeah, we're originally from Seattle and so we are ahead of the game on a lot of that stuff. Where I grew up, but here, like in my apartment building, yeah, we just got recycling bin, so we definitely don't have composting, but why couldn't one put it in like if they had a home? Why couldn't they put it in their regular green bin Because it's got bacteria in it or oh, you mean for companies to take it.

Speaker 2: 11:02

They could put it in there. I mean they do it all over Canada and Australia. They put it in with the food scraps and with the yard waste. Okay, as long as it's in compostable bags or in, okay, paper bags. They don't want plastic in there.

Speaker 1: 11:15

I thought that's maybe what you were saying earlier. Is that a lot of places don't? I know they do that in Vancouver and in New England, but a lot of places don't allow that in there. Is it just because it's a plastic bag that you're using?

Speaker 2: 11:28

No, it's because the composting companies don't want it.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Got it. They want to deal with it.

Speaker 2: 11:32

The composting companies are afraid that there's going to be plastic in there, there's not going to be enough education and enough compostable bags available for all people who don't want to pay a lot of money Right, and they're also. They think that there's something in there that takes extra heat, where you have to be extra careful about. Or when they sell it. They're afraid people say oh, my dog poo's in there. I don't want to buy this bulk compost. There's this big tractor they have to worry about. So it's the composters, but, like I said, they do it in other places.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Right.

Speaker 2: 12:07

But the composters get to say no, we don't want it. And then the city say OK.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Right, like moving forward. Is there a way that we can? I was reading an article this is when I was doing research for this blog post many years ago and speaking of how like and I'm sure I have this wrong but in England they were working on turning like a lamp using dog waste to turn a lamp, like to run a lamp, essentially using the methane from dog waste. Are there ways that we're moving forward? Looking to to I know it sounds gross to most people probably listening but upcycle or recycle the dog waste.

Speaker 2: 12:43

They did that in Cambridge, massachusetts. That's where it started. Ok, it was called Park Spark. Ok, and I was an artist, did a demonstration. This was really an art, what do you call that? Anyhow, he was trying to show that that at this dog park you could put in the poo and this big tank would light a light, and there's a long story behind it. It didn't work Pow-down, yin or something, but the idea was so cool to everybody.

Speaker 2: 13:16

They all wanted it and because it would be useful and there's something there and in England they tried it and the place that they're really doing it. They use biodigesters and in Toronto they have a huge biodigester and they include dog poo in with all the other. They put in a biodigester and it does produce methane. Methane can be captured. Yeah, it's a cool idea, but it's a great idea. It's expensive.

Speaker 1: 13:44

And that's probably why most of the ideas don't.

Speaker 2: 13:46

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah that's any taxpayers to back it. You need, you need political will to do this.

Speaker 1: 13:54

Right.

Speaker 2: 13:55

And in Australia and in Canada they have the political will to do it in some places, right, but here you have to show that you're making money, kind of.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Yep, with most things here, right yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:10

Right, and that's something that absolutely is not going to make money for anybody. It's something it's like water treatment that's not making money for anybody. It's something that has to be done for sanitation and for for the Paris agreement, which is best to get zero waste, and dog waste is something, something like 12 percent of residential waste, so, and that's close to how much textiles Everybody talks about, clothes and all that.

Speaker 1: 14:44

The new fast fashion.

Speaker 2: 14:46

That's really making havoc on the planet, and that's all sexy and wonderful, but not pet poo. And it's easier to deal with the pet poo than it is with all those fabrics and all those plastics and all that stuff. But that's you know. I think only 8 percent of all plastics are actually recycled. We put in ends. I don't know where it goes, right? I've never seen a reporter go out and follow the recycling truck which I would be interesting. Yeah, If I were 25 and I had a camera.

Speaker 2: 15:20

I used to get a little newspapers. I would follow the recycling truck, yeah, but who knows? You know.

Speaker 1: 15:28

So can I ask how this became a passion of yours, like, how did you, how did you fall into the pet waste lifestyle?

Speaker 2: 15:43

Yeah, I mean, I have another life. It's not exactly an obsession, but it's something that you have to keep following and you know we've had so many people who are interested and they lose interest in five minutes. It's just something. Oh, look at that, you know, when I was, I had I was always working in marketing and sales and writing and that sort of thing. And on my last job before I retired, which was quite a while ago, I was in a park reading a book called Natural Capitalism, which was in the library of my employer and I was reading it and eating lunch and this book is really great. It's like a Bible from the 1990s. It talks about how everything should go around in a circle and go back to where it was and how the economy should be doing that and how. It's called Natural Capitalism, so we're talking about businesses and it was a really, really cool book.

Speaker 2: 16:44

As I was reading and I looked up and I saw these people picking up dog poop in the park and I thought, well, this is organic stuff, you know. I mean, maybe it's, maybe they're composting I knew everything you know and then they put trash. Well, maybe people pick them up because it's pick it up because it's useful, like plastic. But then I went back and I started doing some research and I found out that of course it just goes to the trash. Of course it's methane. Look how much there is of it. There's as much dog waste today as there was human waste in 1959.

Speaker 1: 17:25

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 17:26

Yeah, we did math and stuff, so it's a hobby, it's fun. Nobody else is doing it much except myself and my partner in Australia. We have a not profit now with a board of directors Fantastic yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:45

And.

Speaker 2: 17:45

I've been composting this stuff for years from Dog Park. We still are. That's a long time.

Speaker 1: 17:53

You go to Dog Parks and collect the poop.

Speaker 2: 17:56

I have a partner.

Speaker 2: 17:57

I had a company called Enviro Wag that I started 15 years ago to see if this would be composted and worked. I was still working, but I was kind of working on this idea, right, and so I got a young fellow who did dairy composting and he said, oh yeah, I'll do it, just get me some dog poop. But I need to have like half a ton of it. And I said okay. So I went to a local shelter and I picked it up and I took it to him and he composted it and we tested it and it turned out to be really, you know, safe and we didn't do all with it, he just tumbled it and then I tried it on plants and it grew plants like crazy Interesting, there's something here. And then we partnered with a pet scooper who literally did bring in tons of dog waste all in compostable bags. We have partners that we have like 20 trailheads in Boulder, four dog parks in the Boulder area.

Speaker 1: 18:59

Wow.

Speaker 2: 19:00

Okay, there's all along the route and our partner, pet scoop, picks it up and he has a program called Waste Not. So he brings it to the composting site, which is not far from all this stuff, and he we compost it and it's used on site at the retail garden center where it's composted. It's used for trees and plants and that sort of thing. We tried marketing it. I actually put it in bags, we made potting soil mix, we made finished compost. I took it to garden centers. But first of all it's a it's a really difficult industry to penetrate. Composting. We need a lot of product and it's it's just hard to crack into there. And then when we did marketing, it was like people didn't want it because it had dog waste in it.

Speaker 1: 19:58

Yeah. So it's like People have a hard time picking up their poop, just in general you know, my neighborhood yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:06

And if it's cow poop or llama poop or horse poop or something, that's some thing, they don't care, that's nice, probably smells good and I don't care, I'll buy it. Oh, look at that goat compost.

Speaker 1: 20:20

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:21

When you say dog, they think oh my God. That's like when I pick up Ick Right.

Speaker 1: 20:27

Just what are dogs eat, have a relationship to. I don't know if you're a dog owner, but are you a dog owner? Do you have a dog? I have been. I'm a cat owner now.

Speaker 2: 20:37

Yeah, I want all those trips to dog parks and all those dogs.

Speaker 1: 20:48

You, you, you, oh, do you don dogs? Yeah, I, yeah, I'm sorry. What were you saying? I am Well. First of all, I love cats, but I'm actually allergic to them, so I haven't been able to bond with cats in the way that I would like to. So I try to get along with my family, much to the sugar and of my sisters growing up because they probably tried to bring a home to kittens.

Speaker 2: 21:07

My parents didn't, it was not happening for me.

Speaker 1: 21:09

So we had to get out of the way, sadly. But what was I saying? I was saying, you know, does what are dogs consume have an impact? On our waste. Can we address that a little bit?

Speaker 2: 21:22

Do you want to talk to him? The more they eat, the more they poop, right, and if they eat a lot of meat, they poop less. And I don't know how the quality of the poop had you know how that relates to the finished compost. All I know is that you got more of it.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Right.

Speaker 2: 21:41

When you feed them, especially corn rice isn't so bad.

Speaker 1: 21:44

So if you're feeding a dog, a diet you know that has a lot of filler and a lot of corn and a lot of you know, grain, then obviously your poop, their poop, is going to be filled, right, it's going to be probably environmentally friendly to feed them less of that?

Speaker 2: 21:59

Yes, because then there's less poop in a landfill.

Speaker 1: 22:02

Yes.

Speaker 2: 22:03

For what that's worth Right.

Speaker 1: 22:05

And also if the fresher the food, we don't have to get into it but it's easier for them to digest and they use more of that energy in less waste.

Speaker 2: 22:13

Yeah, that too. All of that.

Speaker 1: 22:15

So something to think about as well. I have a dog care business, so I deal with a lot of dog use. Oh, do you? Okay, and so to try to use the compostable bags, but still, you know, sometimes they're not always available, and so I'm literally dealing with dog waste all day long. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, and I feel like the climate change is definitely real. It's showing us more and more. It's definitely happening. So any way that we can be more mindful you know on, in any way that we can to reduce our environmental impact is so super important. So do you have anything else that you want to add? So true, anything else we can do.

Speaker 2: 22:57

Probably. You go through steps of the bags just for starters and then if you have an opportunity to compost or do any of the other things which are much more complicated than just composting in a yard, you can do those things. That's harder, the very hardest thing you can do. And everybody says, oh, I hate this, this is horrible, not why are we doing this? Well, about everybody who has any kind of sense of this at all, and then they forget about it. Nobody wants to be the poo person, nobody wants to see the person to go in front of the council and say, or to their neighbors and say, let's do something about this dog poo, and everybody goes hi, you fool, you know. And you go to council and you got a bunch of you know. You say we want to have dog poo, in with the, you know, in with the food scraps and other. Yeah, sure, you're eccentric and nuts, you know, like it just, and then it just rolls under. Nobody cares.

Speaker 2: 23:58

And the only way that it seems to be done now is if there's some hero in a parks department or in a compost place or at a city council or your. See that this is where Canada and Australia are really ahead, because they have councils with people who are into sustainability and it's their job as a bureaucrat to cut down and have zero waste in their province or in their town and they think, 12%, oh, this is going to look good if we can cut this down, you know. And there's scooper who literally compost the poop that they pick up. It's all like individual heroes who don't care what anybody thinks about them. All they want is adults. But other than that, you know, it's difficult for people to do anything about it because there's no real way to do that. Even the EPA doesn't recognize it. It's yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:57

Even with all the facts out there, even with all the facts and figures of the impact. So can we? You know so, as individual dog owners or dog parents, you know the first step we can take is to use a compostable bag, the ASTM. What was the number?

Speaker 2: 25:15

6400.

Speaker 1: 25:16

6400. Can we, you know, write to our Sure.

Speaker 2: 25:24

The thing is that I've seen this happen so many times. Even when I was in Viroag, I would get hundreds of emails. I think I had 500 people that I collected when we got into the non-profit and they all said I'm going to go to my homeowner's association, I'm going to my council, I'm going to whatever. And then I'd say, let me know how you're doing. And if I write back to them, it was like, oh, they didn't listen, you know. Oh, they're not going to spend their lives hitting their head against a wall. You know what I mean? I can do that.

Speaker 2: 26:03

I'm doing a lot of nice things that I like to do, and this is something that myself and my partner in Australia are very keen on. She started a composting dog park in Port Eiland, australia. So she's, as they say, they're keen on this too. So all we're doing is giving people resources. They hit the white site. They say, oh my God, look at that. A great deal of Canada is doing this. Why are we doing this? And then they have ammunition and if they care enough, they could go to their council or whatever. Or the county person can go to the committee and they can say look, they're doing this all over the place, like here. I'll show you the way, I'll show you the graphics, I'll show you the stuff, and that's kind of what we're doing. We're supplying that and giving people advice. Like there was a person from San Francisco I want to do, I went to my zero waste. Ok, here's everything you need to tell them. Let me know if you have any. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 27:05

That's all we can do.

Speaker 1: 27:07

Yeah, you're getting the word out there and you're just providing solid information to people and talking to people like you.

Speaker 2: 27:15

Talking to people like you who could get the word out, absolutely. Enviro Pet Waste Network has a survey and we're trying to reach all dog owners and we've got about 600 replies so far in Australia and the United States and we're asking them what their practices are with Dog Waste and we're asking them that they would make a little extra effort to have it be more sustainable and we're just asking them various questions. It only takes a minute and it's immediately tabulated. So if I could send you that link, that would be really great if you could get it out.

Speaker 1: 27:46

Is it a link that I can put in the show notes of the podcast so those who are listening can just pop onto the show notes and click on the link?

Speaker 2: 27:53

And OK, great, and then they say where they are and what they're doing, and data that's cool, cool, we're doing something, baby steps.

Speaker 1: 28:03

But yeah, thank you, rose, I so appreciate you joining me. Nice talking.

Speaker 2: 28:07

Charlie.

Speaker 1: 28:08

Nice talking to you. Bye, bye]. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Baroo podcast. I've put links in the show notes to all the great things that Rose and I talked about today and, as always, if you enjoyed the episode, please don't forget to rate and follow the Baroo podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also follow us on Instagram at BarooPodcast, and if you have a story of canine companionship that you'd like to share with me, or you have a question or even a comment, I would love to hear from you. You can email me, charlotte, at thebaroocom. All right, you guys, let's chat soon.