Sad story, my family lost one of our own this weekend. My sister’s 12-year-old dog, Angel, passed away Saturday night, so, needless to say, we are heartbroken.
But, this made me think about how our pets could be greener, too. They are part of our families after all.
Jasmin Malik Chua on the Planet Green website, which is owned by the Discovery Company (Discovery Channle, TLC, Animal Planet, etc…) has a ton of tips for how to make our pet ownership more sustainable.
Of course green pet living all centers around one topic…poop.
If you feed your pets organic food, not only is the development of the food greener, the pets are eating better, and the grass or the dump isn’t getting contaminated with chemicals, because the poop is organic.
Many pet-owners like to recycle plastic bags by reusing them as gloves and a transport mechanism to the trash while on walk. Well, if these bags aren’t biodegradable, all we’re doing is petrifying the poop. All regular dog walkers, or the rare cat-walker, should invest in some biodegradable bags for clean-up, or maybe a plastic toy shovel that can be carried on a walk with you.
Some ambitious pet owners actually compost the animal waste which is quite an undertaking, but takes quite a bit of strain off of the environment.
The statistics on page three of Chua’s piece are particularly enlightening. What I found most interesting was her stat that the more pets we grow up with, the less likely we are to develop allergies to them. Good to know if you love animals and are raising kids!
