easy green pet solution: a dog poop composter!
You don’t know how hard it was for me to type that headline without laughing! I didn’t even know that composting pet waste was possible until I picked up a flier on it at my local natural pet store. (UPDATE: You can use the resulting compost for ornamental plants, but do NOT use it on vegetables or fruits. And you can use this for cat poop too, as long as any litter is biodegradable.) I’ve mentioned before that we have two large dogs, so you can imagine the amount of waste that went into our garbage every week. (Actually, try not to imagine it.) Now we have a place where we can deposit the deposits without using plastic bags. And it was really simple to make, too. Read on for instructions. –Mary T.
Click the link for the instructions. (No gross photos, promise.)
The dog poop composter is built using a garbage can with a lid — you probably have a banged-up old one lying around. You can use plastic or metal, though it might be easier to work with plastic. First you drill holes randomly around the can (though my husband made this look like an art form), making sure to leave a few inches around the top of the can with no holes.
Then cut off the bottom of the can. (We used a sawzall.)
Then you find a discreet spot and dig a hole large enough to cover the holes you drilled in the can.
Drop in the can, fill in around the can with dirt, and put some loose rocks on the bottom of the hole for drainage.
After that, add in what your dog left behind, throw in some septic starter (we got ours in the hardware aisle of a grocery store), sprinkle with a little water, and put on the lid. And you’re done!
The septic starter packaging will give you an idea of how much to use (and it’s impossible to use too much — it will only break down organic matter). Simple maintenance will require you to add a bit every few months.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:23 am
It’s pretty easy to compost the litter of herbivores, such as rabbits.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Cool! I wonder if that would work for kitty poop as well?
October 13th, 2008 at 7:27 am
this is perfect for us! we have 2 large dogs as well (one being a mastiff mix) and in a small-ish yard, it tends to take over! thanks for the easy step by step. we knew it was possible to compost it, but never found easy steps on how to do it! thank you!
October 13th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
This is FANTASTIC! Thanks so much for sharing! I’ll be linking to this.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
But what do you do when it fills up? You can’t put it on your plants? Do you have to just throw away the (hopefully broken-down) poop eventually anyhow? Or… where does the poop go?
But yay that there’s a way to pick up the poop with plastic!
October 13th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
My husband discovered something similar in a store a couple years back,but decided he didn’t want to pay that kind of money. He took a half a plastic barrel we had lying around and buried it in the far back corner of our yard. The doggie waste has been going in ever since, helped along with something similar to the septic starter you show. Et voila, no more doggie doo doo in the dump.
(Our municipality has announced it will be starting a green bin program into which we can dump our kitty litter, meat, dairy, etc. So now the organic waste that wasn’t going into either our food composter or our doggy composter will have somewhere other than the dump to go as well. I can’t wait to see how that impacts what we’re going to be seeing as far as actual garbage from now on.)
October 13th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
PS Dana, what do you add to yours?
October 13th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Okay, I am clarifying a former comment (which I deleted): Morgan, most of it does break down thanks to the additive. However, you can use it to compost plants (I had to read up to figure that out) but NOT to use on vegetables or anything else you plan to eat. And yes, you can compost cat poop too as long as the litter, if there is any, is natural and biodegradable.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Does the septic starter neutralize some of the smell? Even our regular trash smells so foul now that I’m going to be giving the trash men a big tip at Christmas.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Tiff, I’m just keeping my face out of it! : )
October 13th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Just a note: Doggy poop composters of any sort will not work in areas with heavy clay soils. Part of the way the entire system works depends on drainage around the composter, and clay soils are simply too un-porous for the whole thing to compost properly.
Yes, I found this out by experience. I’m still working on ideas for an above-ground, high-heat doggy composter (along the lines of a non-electric composting toilet) that can be used in clay soil (ie, my yard).
October 14th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Mary, my husband uses something he buys from the pet store that’s a compost starter for the doggy composters. We hadn’t thought of using regular septic starter until we saw this post, and now we’re going to price compare and see what’s less expensive…
October 15th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Any idea of how this holds up during the winter? I’m in upstate New York so we have some frozen ground months during which regular composting slows. I’m worried that composting would stall out over the winter and I’d end up with a steaming defrosted pile of gross come spring.
Also wondering if this method does tolerate colder winters — if it would be too late to start now.
And does it attract any critters? Squirrels, raccoons, foxes, coyotes?
October 16th, 2008 at 11:08 am
So this is basically a small septic system, only without all of the design features that are supposed to keep E. coli and the other poop bugs from getting into the groundwater / your kid’s play space / etc.
Nice idea, but you’d be safer (and less likely to run afoul of your town’s septic/sewer ordinances) just flushing the doggie doo down the toilet with the rest of the fecal matter your household generates. If you think that’s a waste of water, look at it this way: are you willing to start putting your own poop in a bucket in the back yard?
Maybe you are, but I wouldn’t want to live downstream of that bucket. There are reasons we don’t have outhouses any more (besides the convenience of indoor plumbing).
October 16th, 2008 at 11:15 am
For a great explanation of how real septic systems actually work:
http://www.septicprotector.com/Howsepticsfunction.html
October 16th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Actually, korinthe, according to Seattle’s Earthworm Design, who supplied the flier that we used as a guide, while “leaving fecal mattter on the gorund can spread E.coli, salmonella, and giardia….When rain washes away unattended waste, it enters the drainage system…., [Composting pet waste] Turns waste into fertilizer; the enzymes in the septic starter breaks down fecal matter which disperses underground….”
October 16th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t think they’d be getting so popular nor sold in stores if they posed more of a health risk than one’s dog “going” outside to begin with. Thanks for weighing in.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:44 am
Hi Mary,
Actually, all of the more formal studies I’ve been reading about say this is a really terrible health idea. I don’t think the popularity of the practice has anything to do with how safe it is. I don’t think most home and garden groups have a staff microbiologist. It seems like a good idea on the surface, but it just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:23 am
James, could you provide a link or a cite please?
October 27th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I flush my dog’s poops down the toilet with a flushable dog poop bag. Most eco-friendly way to get rid of poops.
There are flushable dog poop bags. The best answer probably because dog poop can get treated just as your poop is. Throwing dog poops into the trash overcrowds our landfills and pollutes our water system.
FlushDoggy.com offers FREE SAMPLE TO TRY !
November 1st, 2008 at 5:44 pm
following on what james had to say: i, too, have read studies that say that composting pet doo is not a good idea. matter of fact, i keep searching for one that says it *is.* examples follow.
http://www.ecocycle.org/askeco-cycle/2005/0701.cfm
Composting pet waste in the backyard may seem like a good idea but according to compost experts at the CSU Cooperative Extension, the pathogens and parasites within the waste are not properly treated or removed under most compost conditions. They strongly advise that pet waste should never be placed in your home compost bin or directly on your landscape.
http://mailman.cloudnet.com/pipermail/compost/2004-November/012659.html
… We took a sample of this one-year old soil-looking material and had it tested at BioVir Laboratories, Inc for Helminth Ova Assay, Salmonella Assay, Fecal Coliform Assay and Total Solids Assay. We then allowed the material to sit for another 6 months and tested it again, hoping time and microbial competition would bring the material into the “safe” level. It didn’t.
many, many, MANY more. http://www.google.com/search?q=composting+pet+waste&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
November 17th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Thank you for this. We have two big dogs and live in an area where it’s commonplace to leave doggie poo in the yard. This seemed a better solution. My husband made a lid for it that is almost flush with the ground–a round piece of plywood hinged in the middle, the back half screwed into the trash can to hold it in place.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:25 am
hi! Just a note these work very well, but if there is a pet with lots of fur…(sorry, to be gross, but it does get in the poop…), the fur will eventually stop up the drainage holes. We live in a warm area with lots of bugs and covering several large “deposits” with a wet layer of newspaper cuts down on stinkiness and the little gnats that somehow manage to get in there. Pouring water in the cotainer will also speed the breakdown process and encourages more worm activity. We never spread ours anywhere as it naturally breaks down faster than we could fill it. I imagine we will fill it one day, but we will probably just cover it up with topsoil, plant a tree there and more to our “drop spot” to another location.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:33 am
[...] year, I was excited about our DIY dog poop composter, but that excitement waned once I started reading the comments and their links to all the negatives [...]