How to not waste your dog's poop

If you live in New York City like me, or honestly pretty much anywhere, you've probably run into the problem of dog poop everywhere.

Yes, it's annoying and gross (and unsurprisingly bad for the environment) when people don't pick up after their pets. Especially if you weren't looking where you were walking. But even if they do pick it up and throw it away, it's trapped in a little green bag sitting in a landfill.

In the U.S. alone, pet dogs create over 10 million tons of poop every year–the same weight as 27 Empire State Buildings.

Could all that poop that ends up in a landfill (or the bottom of your shoe) every year have a greater use?

Myles Stubblefield thought about this while cleaning up after 16 dogs running around his training facility.

He decided to buy a lot of worms, collect the poop, and turn it into compost and soil. This so-called vermiculture process works alongside his flourishing business in Buffalo, New York.

They can't sell this compost yet, largely due to safety and contamination concerns which make this solution unlikely to be scalable. However, they do use it in-house to help shrubs and trees flourish, and they also sell beautiful-looking and dog poop-free super soil.

In a perfect world, we live out a fully circular economy and have no waste. Challenging norms and thinking of innovative solutions for the Earth are the only way we get there, and perhaps this idea is the start of creating an innovative and scalable use for animal waste.

For now, just make sure you pick up after your pup.