The bags most dog owners use are terrible for the environment.
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Have you ever thought about the impact all of the plastic bags used to pick up dog poop everyday have on the environment? Chicagoan Paul Cannella did. He never seemed to have enough. He’d double bag his groceries even when he didn’t need to and ask his mother to save them for him so he’d always have enough on hand for his yellow lab.
He decided to turn to the Internet to see if there was a better solution – and learned how bad the plastic bags he’d been using were on the environment. This is the moment he decided to buy poopbags.com. Poop Bags resold biodegradable and compostable bags that he imported from a company in Sweden. That was 2003.
Now the company is an award-winning enterprise that has grown substantially since its initial founding. Users are able to buy poop bags in four different countries, as well as online. The website reads, “When you want the best, most reliable, and best rated dog poop bag on Earth, reach for a bag from The Original PoopBags.com.”
The company offers 3 different tiers of eco-friendly bags, as well as holders that are 38% made of corn. The most expensive “five paw” products are made from vegetable oils, starch and plant fibers, and will decompose at a speed similar to food waste.
“It’s a bell curve. I think 10 percent of people are super eco-friendly and will buy top level poop bags and will pick it up if they saw someone else who didn’t,” he told The Huffington Post. “The next branch wants to be eco-friendly and will pay slightly more. Then there are the people who just use a grocery bag or whatever, and the last group don’t care.”
The plastic bags that many dog owners use are among the between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags consumed worldwide each year, based on estimates by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Using Poop Bag’s biodegradable and compostable bags is a great way to cut down on this number.
“We of course want people to choose a bag from us, but we mostly care that somebody chooses to do their part in picking up, helping save the earth one poop at a time,” he said. “It helps when everyone does their part and kicks in for the effort.”