I regularly walk our 5 dogs and ALWAYS pick up their pooh, my frustration comes when, now all of them have done the toilet there is never a bin around to put my bags in and I end up carrying 5-10 bags of the stuff on our walk. Then when we get home I'm not permitted to put it in my garden refuse bin so have no option but to put it in my normal household bin ( much to the bin men's disgust ) cause by the end of the week there is a black bag full  !! Any suggestions people ???

I don't see why popping poo in the rubbish bin would be an issue with the binmen - we've always put our dog's in the bin and never had a complaint - and our dog poos for England!

I agree that there aren't enough dog muck bins about, though.  In the park where we walk ours, there is a grand total of four dog poo bins - one of which is about a mile down a dirt track!

Hi jamjar,  Yes I agree - there are never dog bins when you want them!  As for disposing of it at home, I flush my 2 dogs' poo down the toilet :-).  Could take you a while though with your poo collection, as I do one dog's at a time!!

I think it is fine in the bin, that is what bins are for :)  I do tend to put the poo bags together in another old carrier bag and tie that up before slinging it in though.
There may be hope on the dog bin front.  In both the areas I live there has been a sudden large increase in the number of bins.  One, rather amusingly has been placed just outside a wood at the the end of a long track from the road so the poor old bin men must walk right along this from the road to empty it whilst the dog walkers have to come out to the road end to get out of the woods anyway so it would have been no inconvenience to them at all to have it sited at the road end of the track :)

I hate the idea of dog waste ending up in little plastic bags, warm and moist and the perfect breeding ground for bacteria then destined for landfill sites where it takes goodness knows how long to break down.  I encourage my dogs to go in shrubland where the elements can start the job of breaking it down immediately, if they go on or around paths or places that folk walk or children play, I then pick up in a plastic bag and either empty way off the beaten path or take home to deposit in the loo.

OK are there no dog wardens in your area ? they don't care where your dog does the toilet , if you don't pick it up they fine you £40, yes I do see your point though.

Only £40?! It seems that Wiltshire seems to have the most expensive fine area from the amount of posts I've read about this.

We're fined £500 if the dog poos and you don't pick it up!

your lucky keira ;-) I have just recently seen a new sign put up on a local public footpath saying £1000 fine for dog fouling! We live near Reading Berkshire
em :-)

We do have dog wardens and they do fine, but I try to ensure that my dogs don't pooh in highly populated areas - if they do then of course I pick up and dispose in the loo at home or if nearer in rough or shrub land.   Dog pooh disposed of in land fill sites is providing a petrie dish for bacteria and disease, so personally the environmental issue is bigger than risking a £50 fine. 

My dogs are fed raw so their waste is fairly minimal but would quite happily argue this with both the dog warden and council but when they do come out I think they're kept more than busy by folks who just let their dogs go anywhere.  Just wish they'd get the folks who's dog pooh right outside my back gate daily!  

Dog poo in landfill sites is no more an environmental hazard than the tons of rotting food waste.   And where do you think parents of infants put their disposable nappies?   Same place, same issue.   Add to that the hundreds of birds and other creatures that look at landfills like their own version of MacDonald's - adding their own poo to the mix.   Dog poo hardly matters.

Stacey

Absolutely agree with everything you say, not going to even begin on how I feel about disposable nappies.  We all do as we think best I'm sure, I just try to keep my contribution (including food wastage) to an minimum where possible.

Bin men are wonderful - I remember back when my kids were babies and obvisouly still in nappies, well one day our lovely bin men 'forgot' to empty our bins (no matter that they had to walk passed our house TWICE so how they forgot I don't know) anyway, I phoned them up explaining that our rubbish had been left and as it was the high of summer they were not too pleasant on the nose, I explained that what with normal refuse plus babies nappies could they imagine what the smell was like - their answer 'you're not supposed to throw babies nappies in with household refuse madam '  !!!! - so what was I suposed to so with them, that was not their problem, but if they emptied our bins and saw evidence of nappies they were perfectly within their rights to leave the rubbish where it was !  With that I'm not too sure what these bin men would do with dog poo, probably have a heartattack I should think :)

Okay, where do you guys put all your trash then? If you're not allowed to put it in the bin?? What does household refuse mean (I'm sorry for being a bit ignorant, but English is not my first language :( )?
The way we deal with these things in my country is like that....... we've got big bins (one for 4 or 5 houses in every street) and that's where we put our waste from the house (in plastic bags) and every Thursday the truck picks it up. They certainly don't look inside our bags to see what's in them, the truck has a mechanism that picks up the big bin and empties it in the truck itself. The only thing we're not allowed to throw inside is anything burning (for obvious reasons). Other than that, anyone can use the bins out in the street, so basically anywhere around the city when you walk the dog you have those bins and you can throw doggy waste the minute you pick it up.

Ory,

We have a useless system around, I believe, much of this country! We get what they call a 'wheely bin', big enough for about 3-4 black bags of rubbish, which gets emptied every two weeks, then we have a green weelie bin which is for garden waste, that gets emptied every other week along with an array of bags and boxes which are to be used for recycling newspapers, empty and cleaned out glass and plastic bottles, food tins, and glass jars etc.

We have to arrange for a skip every 6 months because even with only the three of us in our house, we find that our garage get's so full up of our normal every day household rubbish bags that it not only starts to smell(especially when it is hot) but also would be attracting rats, mice and other vermin!

As I said, for us this system is useless!

WOW - you get a wheely bin !!!  We don't over here :(  Once a week we have to carry all our bags from our garage / back porch down the drive to the road where we put it all in a pile to which everyone else adds to.  All we hope is that they don't miss us one week or we'd have to carry it all back before the foxes get at it.  Now which ten bags were ours ? LOL :)

Believe me BM I would rather your set up! We have always recycled, even before they bought this system in, but for us to be allowed a maximum of 4 black bags of rubbish every two weeks is just ridiculous! And then they have the cheek to put the council tax up!!! GRRRRR!! ;)

Recycling is important. I'm all for that, as we also have 4 bins in our road. One for glass, one for plastic, one for paper and one for everything else. Limiting people to only 3-4 bags per 2 weeks, now that is what I call invading one's privacy. I can't imagine how a family with 2 kids,2 or 3 dogs manages that :( ...... so where do they expect dirty baby diapers and doggy poo goes?

Well, we have me, my hubbie, our three year old son (no nappies anymore!!) a kitten and a puppy, we have always put Thomas' nappies in with the normal household waste, we have never been told not to, and up until a couple of months back, the kittens litter tray contents went in as well! Unless anyone ever tells us not to, else they won't pick the rubbish up, then we will continue to put our pup's poo in with the rest of the rubbish.

I also think recycling is important, and like I said even before this system came in, we used to recycle, but now we wouldn't have the choice, I wouldn't like to even think about how many more rubbish bags would collect in the garage!

I still can't imagine how they know when you put doggy poo in the plastic bag in the bin..... do they actually open up every bag or are their noses trained to spot things like that out of all the other trash? ;)

You're not supposed to put garden refuse in the bin bags either.  We have bins for that now but before we did they left a bag of household rubbish because I had picked up a couple of handful of leaves from the path and popped them on the top.  The have also left a bag before because they could see it had rabbit hutch straw and wood chips in it.  I resorted to 'hiding' things in boxes and double bags to ensure they took it.  I don't know how they would feel about dog poo so I definitely hide that, double bagged and in a box if possible (washing powder or cereal ) if not near to the bottom of the bag as possible.  Makes me feel like a criminal :(

we have a green wheely bin for household refuse which is emptied weekly, we also have a blue wheely bin for recycling which is emptied every other week and on the week the recycling bin isn't emptied the garden waste truck comes around to pick up green bags.
it works very well i think. I do put dog poo in the green bin, and i have been known to disguise the odd thing which you shouldnt put in the bin.
And the fine here for not picking up dog poo is £200. :)

Fine here for not picking up poo can be up to £1,000 and they name and shame occasionally

I always do pick up the poo, but here's one thing that confuses me...... when I'm visiting in London I see that they're really strict when it comes to doggy poo (which is in fact a very good thing), but on the other hand I have seen people open up a car window and throw McDonald's bag out on the street and drive off like nothing happened :( . So doggy poo no, no..... plastic on the street okay??!! I much preffer something that will dissolve in a week or so, than plastic or glass all over the city.....

I clean up after my dogs and it pi**es me off when people don't.

Amazing - rubbish collection once every two weeks !! Are we heading back to the dark ages ?  We're not that wasteful a family, there is virtually no waste from any meals (literally the only things that don't get eaten are any bones, plates , cutlery LOL) we don't get take aways so no waste from them, we do have one doggy bin in our area but if we don't walk the dogs that way then the poop gets flushed down the loo, the cat litter tray (as he is old and infirm) I pull out the poop and chuck that down the loo and then the rest is either popped into a black bag or (as we used wood based litter) dug over into the garden.

But with two adults and three children we still get through 4-5 bags a week, sometimes more and refuse collection once every two weeks for that amount of rubbish is not acceptable - what are we paying for ?

I can't believe the evry two weeks thing - surely we as a society are supposed to be getting cleaner, but leaving refuse around for two weeks (especially in the summer with flies = maggots !) is just disgusting and then they wonder why there are more illnesses around today, bugs are becoming resilliant ! - like I say, looks like we are heading back to the dark ages before sanitation was even heard of.

The two week collection is fine :).  There are only two of us but even with our dog poos :) we only fill our wheelie about halfway, big families are allowed two.  If there is not much cooked food waste (and how can there be in a doggy household ;)) and not much take-aways bought there is very little else to go in there remembering all card packaging, tins and bottles are going into the recycling boxes.  Our council does not recycle plastic but then I buy very little that is packaged in that way as I think we need to consider what we buy and not just recycle it.  The bin lids seal down pretty good we have never had any maggots, flies or smells even.  I think people really have to get their heads round doing a lot more recyling and reducing the amount being tipped into landfills, after all who wants to live on or even near that land.

"'wheely bin', big enough for about 3-4 black bags of rubbish, which gets emptied every two weeks"

thats crap natalie! Our wheelies get emptied every wednesday, and the green boxes (glass, cans etc) & bags (papers, mags...) go out each fortnight, alternating with the garden / grass waste.

and.......our bin-men take anything near your bin too!  My mum & dad live 25 minutes away, and f its not in the bin, it doesn't go.

i love my bin men....mine'll even go up my drive and get it if i forget to put it out :D !!

nicola

You guys have a personal bin man?? :) wooow, that's really cool! I don't know the people that empty our bins, but I swear it's different people each time.........

Hi Jamjar. I would suggest that you contact your local council and ask them. i doubt if they have any plans to install them but if you dont ask... Anyway we ended up paying for a couple in our village. They arent too dear I think about £60 each, the difficult bit was getting the council to empty them.

Also technically dog poo (and human for that matter) is actually classed as 'hazardous' waste and so in theroy the council can refuse to collect it or charge extra if it is considered to be beyond normal domestic levels.

Why would they refuse or charge extra, if they want you to pick it up? Which one is it then? Pick it up and put it in a bin or simply leave it there.....they're really making it hard for you. I don't understand the logic.

You expect life to be logical or simple??!

Ok from the collection point of view it is deemed to be hazardous because of all the things that you can potentially catch from it and what would happen if a substantial quantity got in to the water table etc. Therefore it SHOULD be subject to a risk analysis before bein men are asked to collect it in any quantity. Hence they dont collect it from dog bins on their normal bin round. It can also cost extra to put it in land fill as the site would require a different section on its licence etc etc. 

Too complicated. As I already said before...... UK is unfortunately not the cleanest country in the world as I have seen way too many dirt in the city (plastic, food and so on), so making such a big deal about that is really silly. I would encourage everyone to pick up their dog poo, but there must be a place where they can put it. Just look at the most advanced European countries and the way they deal with this issue. In Holland for example you have special places in the city where dogs do their business and then you have those small machines that come and pick it up. Basically every country has these things sorted out, so I have no idea why complicate it so much....... they're not really encouraging people to clean after themselves, do they.......
You're right, life is not simple..... but come on, this is a joke. ;) As if we don't have enough of other problems to deal with every day.

Besides, there's one more thing I was wondering about. Every time I come to UK I see foxes all over London and the suburbs. They are after all just another canine that also has to poo every day, so is cleaning that? I'm pretty sure it's not any cleaner than doggy poo. And why so many animals in the city in the first place? Dirty people throwing food all over the place again....... I think humans are in fact the dirtiest "animals" on this planet.......

We don't all live in London.  London doesn't put on a good show where rubbish is concerned.  This doesn't mean the rest of the country is the same though.  I live in a new town and the town centre isn't particularly good on a busy shopping day but the rest of the town is very tidy and clear of rubbish.

All cities are filthy. Rome and Paris are disgustingly dirty - worse than London.

I'll just cross them off my list then. :D

The point is not that other cities are also dirty (we don't want to look at those), the point is that some are LESS filthy and those are the ones we have to look up to. Making things easy is another step towards making people think about our environment. Helping them by putting enough bins and other places where they can throw rubbish.......

Well Ory you may well have answered your own question here.  London didn't have bins for a while because terrorists used to plant bombs in them.  Perhaps this is why 'Londoners' don't bother now, they need the re-education to be reinforced.  One of my daughters is off on her adventure to Australia tomorrow and she was telling me that there is an on the spot $70 fine for dropping so much as a cigarette end on the pavement there.  You know what we Brits are like though - too soft.

I agree about the point of too few doggy bins.  I also put my dogs waste into our domestic bin, but WOW don't some people have a lot of waste!.  We are a family of 5 (no nappies though), 1 dog and two cats.  We only ever have two black bags of waste each week and one orange bag for recycling (paper, plastic, cans, etc).  Glass has to be taken to local recycling bins. We don't usually have take aways and I buy alot of fresh stuff, so I suppose that cuts our rubbish down.

Fiona

Why put dog waste in the domestic bin though ?  We have two dogs and like I say if I go on a different walk where there is no doggy bin I bring it home and tip it down the loo - I then wrap up the used doggy bag in tissue and pop that in the bin.

I also buy fresh food - there is waste with fresh food too, topping and tailing vegetables, leaves from the outside of cabbage etc, plus those horrid polystyrene (sp) containers that fresh meat comes in, tins of cat food, dog food bags, refuse from kids pack lunches (the schools advise rubbish to be brought home and disposed of as it cuts down on their waste) - there is no recycling collection that I know of round here (lived here for four years and not seen it) and the nearest recycling centre is a twelve mile trip to a place that is on my way to dog training but that is late at night and the place is closed and gated.

I would recycle no problem, and I do what I can when I can, so obviously I need to get in touch with my local council and find out why I am paying the earth each month for my Council Tax and how's about getting some kind of recycling system going on in our village.

I worry more about the plastic bag going into the bin and ultimately the infill site than the biodegradable poo :) but obviously in practical terms I can't just chuck it into a wheelie An upstairs toilet doesn't make a very practical solution either.  Most of our walks are in the countryside anyway so unless the poo is on a path I don't collect up from alongside the sheep stuff as I do think it is much better for the environment not to involve bags, collection by vehicle, infill sites etc except when necessary.
Your vegetable waste can go on your compost heap although carrot tops, broccolli trimmings etc all go into the dog in our house :)

I too don't like plastic, what ever happened to the trial 'biodegradable' bags from a few years ago ?  Scrapped as a good idea I suppose ;)

We live in a village that is surrounded by farmland, and even though most of my walks with my springer are through the fields I still pick up his waste as I myself have once too often popped my welly straight in the middle of some other dogs poop, not nice trying to get that out from between the 'treads' LOL.

An upstairs loo is not a problem - I don't always use the outside one for our dog poo, sometimes the handle gets stuck and I'll be bu88ered if I'm gonna climb up with the spiders to unstick it (that's OH's job. bless him :) )

Oh well, need to run for prime minister and get all this sorted out :D

Chez_swa, I think you Brits are actually very disciplined people ;) and I seriously didn't know about not being able to have any bins in the city. Of course people will start forgetting about manners if there's nowhere you can put your trash....... as for the bombs, I don't think that makes much of a difference since terrorists can put it anywhere else. I don't believe no bin policy will actually stop their intentions :( . Did they put them back though?

Hi Ory,
Terrorists can put bombs anywhere as they have very recently demonstrated but years ago - (can't remember exactly when, might have been quite a while ago come to think of it) terrorists actually targeted bins. Consequently bins were removed from the streets, railways and tube stations.

Bins have been put back.  I think though it's just a case of people not having any respect for their environment.  The dirtier it becomes the less they seem to care, but that's just my opinion. 

RRfriend, that is a great system :) ! Similar to ours...... each country simply has to try and make things simple if they want people to take care of the environment. Educating young people about it helps as well....

Chez swa is absolutely right. Last time we were in Paris there were plenty of litter bins - but they were all sealed up to prevent bombs being planted in them.

Hi everyone. I'm new on this board, so maybe this is an odd subject to start off with...Anyway, in my country (Sweden) we throw our poo-bags in the domestic bin, it's definitelly allowed. Our Kennel Club has made stickers, saying; "You are welcome to throw your poo-bag here" to stick on your bin. That way, if my pocket is full of bags from my three dogs, (big breed:rather full bags) I can use someone elses bin, and they in return are free to use mine. Quite a good idea, I think. Our Kennel Club sends them out for free, all you have to do is order them. Maybe if someone finds this idea any good, they could make their own sticker to put on their bin? Not a very good idea if you normally have to disgiuse the poo-bags in old ice-cream-boxes though...