Biodegradable Poo Bags - What Do You Do With Them?

[ReikiAnge]

As per the title, if you use biodegradable poo bags, what do you do with them once they're used? As has been said, it seems a bit pointless to use them if you are just going to put them in a normal bin with a normal bin bag and they're not cheap to buy ...

 

And as for why I'm thinking about biodegradable poo bags at 1.30 in the morning - no idea

[merledogs]

I put mine straight in the wheelie bin.

[Happylittlegreensquirrel]

I put mine in the dog poo bin supplied by the council , I don't know what they do with it

[zico's mum]

I checked with the council if the bags they use in the dog poo bins are biodegradable,they aren't so I don't buy them anymore.

[gremlin22]

i suspect all council poo bins would be incinerated, like with medical waste. I know big boarding kennels have to have seperate bin collections for it, and it's the big yellow waste bags.

[BillyMalc]

In theory, biodegradable poo bags "should" be left out of the way, for them to degrade with their contents. Seeing as that isn't an option, and they are ridiculously expensive, I don't bother with them.

[ailsas mum]

Two guys I sometimes walk with use folded up newspaper to pick up dog poo.

 

Terri

[cycas]

Sometimes I put them in a poo bin. This is illogical on many levels but is what the council and the general population want me to to do with them. I know that's feeble, but sometimes it's hard to go against the grain...

 

I'm not sure what happens then. I have a feeling that I asked a while ago and they said it was incinerated. I've emailled my local council to check if this is still the case. Even if it goes into landfill, I understand that biodegradeable substances take a long time to break down in landfill because of the lack of oxygen. I guess there is still an argument for using a cornstarch or paper bag in landfill over a plastic one, on the grounds that plastic is made of non-replaceable oil, even a slow breakdown is going to be faster, and methane is a usable byproduct. But it's a pretty shaky argument.

 

I've also been using these: http://www.flushablepoobags.co.uk/ and they seem to flush quite well. I don't like them as much as my normal paper and card scoops though, as I think they are less usable, but they are definitely handy to have about.

 

I also bury poo under my hedges: I can do this because I have a big overgrown garden and a lot of hedges and no pets that want to eat poo. It breaks down very quickly with a thin layer of grass clippings over it: if bagged, the poo and paper usually disappears within a couple of weeks. This is, clearly, not practical for many people.

 

I keep planning to have a proper poo composter, but I've not done it yet.

 

If I am walking a good way from anywhere and it is pretty quiet with a lot of bracken or leaf-mould so you can excavate a reasonable hole with a boot, I bury the poo bags. I try to put a big stone on top to discourage wildlife or other dogs from excavating, or bury it under a tree root or something. Again, this is not really a scaleable approach, and there are ecosystems where it wouldn't be a good move (sand dunes for example). The paper and poo breaks down rapidly, but the card bits can hang around as long as a month.

Edited October 5, 2009 by cycas

[ReikiAnge]

Thanks for all your replies

 

I was buying them but then as others thought, if they're just going into the dog poo bin or our bin, what's the point, so have been using up what I have but also using cheapy nappy sacks.

 

Have seen the flushable type before but those prices in bulk seem more reasonable. Might give those a go at some point, thanks for the link

[mooandboo]

I use biodegradable nappy sacks (cheaper than poo bags)and put them in biodegradable bin bags There aren't many poo bins around here so I take any poo bags home to dispose of.

[ReikiAnge]

Wendy, where do you get biodegradable nappy sacks from please

[cycas]

The thing about nappies is that they aren't particularly biodegradeable anyway - they usually have a lot of plastic in them, so 'biodegradable' on a box of nappy sacks is a purely marketing thing: if you are going to put a 40% plastic nappy in a bag, then it's still made of plastic so what the bag is made of makes little odds.

 

There are lots of 'biodegradeable' bag substances. The better poo bags are not just 'biodegradeable' but 'compostable' - that means that if you dispose of them in the right way, bag and poo will become compost in a matter of months. The flushable ones are made of PVA, which is the stuff that they put on, for example, those washing liquid gel ball things, dishwasher tabs etc. I think the main component of the PVA is probably cornstarch - that's also used for a lot of different types of biodegradeable bag. There's a whole debate about whether cornstarch is a good idea to use for this sort of thing when we need to up food production for our ever-growing population which I will not go into here.

 

The cheaper 'biodegradable' bags are likely to be still made of plastic, but mixed with something else - this means that instead of a solid plastic bag, in a few years you have a pile of teeny plastic fragments. In some situations that might be an improvement, but you might not want to use that sort of bag if you were home composting or using some sort of soil toilet arrangement, let alone if you were flushing - because the fragments don't break down completely, so your composter would fill up.

 

This is SOO complicated! Councils really should get their act together and provide solutions, nobody can really expect the average dog-owner to read up on bag chemistry to make an informed decision. Even most of the places you can buy bags don't give you any useful info on this sort of thing. http://www.treehugger.com/ has some interesting info.

[mooandboo]

Wendy, where do you get biodegradable nappy sacks from please

Waitrose - they're fully compostable and I only use them for dog poo - no nappies in this house thankfully - they're really light and a good size which I need as Harry & Lucas do huge poos

 

Theyre called Nature Babycare Eco Disposal Bags (I think - haven't got the box, I just keep the roll in my pocket) and cost £1.64 for 50

[ReikiAnge]

Thanks Wendy

[ReikiAnge]

It is darn complicated Victoria. Don't worry I wasn't going to flush anything that wasn't sold as suitable for flushing.

 

The biodegradable bags I already have are 100% compostable and biodegradable, I spent ages looking online before I bought them to make sure they were the "proper" thing.

 

So, apologies if I sound ignorant here, but if you use the proper biodegradable ones, do you have to dig a hole and bury them to dispose of them correctly (other than tossing them into a bin which I realised after buying them kinda defeats the point!)? What about risks of putting the poo back into the soil? My dogs are wormed regularly but then they will eat the poo of cats that come and cr@p in our garden/on our track etc. and other wild animal delicacies in the fields, so who knows what is going back into them then.

 

The idea of composting is a good one in principle BUT I'm not sure exactly what I'd need to do/how much space I'd need and also I have HUGE issues with those W things that live in the ground that you need for composting which has stopped me doing anything like this so far.

 

I would be happy to bring all poo back home if I could find a safe (and non scary!) way of disposing it. Especially now I have my dicky bag

 

What about finding a place at the bottom of a hedge on a country track to put your biodegradable bag? Somewhere where no person is ever going to tread. Should one be shot for that?