by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
DENVER, Colorado, USA, June 2009 – Poo Free Parks, a privately-held company that installs and maintains eco-friendly pet waste bags and dispensers, announces an environmentally responsible, community-based program addressing the issue of dog waste in city parks and along waterways.
The Poo Free Parks program will kick off in Denver with plans to expand to other markets including San Francisco and New York. Through an exclusive contract with the City and County of Denver, Poo Free Parks will install and maintain a minimum of 200 pet waste bag dispensers strategically placed in Denver City and County parks, at no cost to the taxpayer.
The dispensers are made from 100 percent recyclable aluminum and the bags are 100 percent biodegradable, designed to biodegrade within 18 months. Maintenance crews will drive hybrid vehicles.
According to Kevin Patterson, manager of Denver Parks and Recreation, “the service will be funded through cause marketing, aligning publicly minded businesses with a public need through an environmentally conscious effort.” Sponsorships, which help defray the costs for installation and maintenance, are available at the single park level, city quadrant level or the exclusive sponsorship level.
“This program is truly a win-win situation all the way around. It’s good for the parks, the people, the planet and our cities,” says founder and president, Bill Airy, Poo Free Parks. “Pet waste can ruin an otherwise beautiful park, creating health hazards, an unsightly mess, not to mention the large amounts of plastic waste that accumulate.”
The program addresses several important environmental and civic issues, says Airy: cleans up parks, waterways and walkways; improves water quality in our rivers, streams and lakes; reduces the amount of harmful plastics in our landfills and oceans; saves city and taxpayer dollars by delegating pet waste tasks to a private entity; and offers employment opportunities to at risk individuals from local rehabilitation networks.
Poo Free Parks is a Denver-based, privately-held company that provides eco-friendly pet waste bags and dispensers. The company is dedicated to keeping parks and waterways clean and beautiful in an eco-friendly manner, providing employment opportunities to rehabilitated homeless individuals and residents at local battered women’s shelters and bringing value and recognition to program sponsors. For more information, please visit www.PooFreeParks.com.
This certainly is a program and system that should be applauded and we could do with it also in the United Kingdom and, I am sure, elsewhere.
While in the USA it would appear dog excrement is considered a health hazard and hence I should assume the waste classed as hazardous waste in Britain it is now been decided at local government level that while they would like people, obviously, and in fact it is, theoretically compulsory, to pick up their dog waste, it can be deposited in ordinary littler bins.
This probably makes the UK, yet again, a dirty country in the eyes of many people and no one, I am sure, could blame them.
So far there are also no biodegradable bags in use in the British “poop-a-scoop” system and not only the waste in itself causes a problem, which in my opinion should be incinerated with clinical waste, but bags that people drop while pulling out one to pick up their dogs' mess and they cannot be bothered to retrieve stays around the countryside, thus littering the place.
Much of cleaning up after one's dog depends on the owners and many of those that I have the misfortune to observe do not consider their impact.
There are many that nonchalantly carry on walking knowing full well what their dog is doing just behind them and they just could not be bothered to pick up what the dog left. When challenged by park rangers, for instance, many of them are extremely abusive to the point of threatening the officers with violence.
It is dog owners who make use the of parks and open spaces who are ultimately responsible for your actions and they should consider that it could be their child or grandchild that could pick up the Toxicara parasite from dog waste that has not been disposed off properly.
You cannot expect clean parks when you are not prepared to do your bit!
© 2009
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Green Program Launched to Keep City Parks Poo Free
