Poop Power: How Dog Waste Can Save The Environment!

Waterloo recently announced that we will soon host a pilot program that will turn dog waste into energy, using a process called anaerobic digestion, which happens when organic waste breaks down in an environment without oxygen. So how exactly does that work? How does poop power your laptop?

Dog poop is one of the most challenging issues every park system and municipality faces. Frankly, dog poop is toxic. It has parasites, bacteria and viruses in it; pathogens that can live up to four years after that pile of dog waste has been washed away from the rain.

Those pathogens cause serious disease. Those pathogens can wash into our urban water systems. Studies show that between 20 to 30 per cent of all bacteria in urban watersheds is created by dog feces.

As the number of dogs in Canada continues to grow, so will the issue of waste disposal, and even more so with increasing urbanization, limited amounts of suitable park spaces and shrinking landfill sites. This provides an opportunity for us to re-think the “poop-and-scoop-then-send-to-landfill” practice currently in place.

For this process to work, the bags of dog poop are stored in an underground container for 10 to 14 days and then vacuumed out and sent to a processing plant outside of the city to be combined with other organic waste.

Through anaerobic digestion, it will create a biogas that can then be burned for heat and energy. Any leftover waste is then used for fertilizer.

Biogas is methane produced by the breakdown of biodegradable materials such as biomass, manure, sewage, municipal waste, green waste, plant material and crops. This process occurs in the absence of oxygen, with micro-organisms doing all the hard work.

Biogas is a mixture of 60% methane, 40% carbon dioxide. The exact composition of biogas depends on what is being ‘digested’. Biogas can be burned to provide heat, lighting or both and provides a source of many families to cook their food in developing countries like India.

Cool!

What do you think about the potential for “poop power”?