The Mayor and the Pooper Scooper
Credit for breaking the impasse is usually given to Ed Koch, who as mayor-elect in 1977 decided to take the law to the state government level. But credit is also due to the assemblyman who, during hearings, demonstrated a pooper-scooper device consisting of a bag on a stick that snapped shut. Brandow says that the show caused “a lot of laughter,” but it also convinced legislators that the elderly wouldn’t have to bend down, and no one would have to use their hands.
Just passing the law, of course, was only the first step, because police could never write enough tickets to persuade everyone to scoop. “It’s not the law, it’s the custom,” Brandow says. “It was about public education and changing our perception of what our individual duties were.”
And at first, many were not eager to embrace this duty. To avoid picking up from the sidewalk, one owner reportedly lined a room with Astroturf to persuade his dog to go indoors. The owner of Sandy, the dog starring in the Broadway show Annie, moved to the suburbs in protest.
Fights also arose over the details. At first, people weren’t allowed to deposit their bagged poop in public trash cans. A court case had to clarify the language of the law so that anyone walking a dog, not just its owner, had to clean up. Yet another case determined that requiring Orthodox Jews to scoop on the Sabbath was not a violation of religious freedom.
But with the first successful poop-scoop law in a major city, New York started a trend that spread all over the country and the world. One city that followed quickly was San Francisco in 1978: The 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk immortalizes a moment where the mayor steps in a pile as part of a publicity campaign for the proposed law. And while many companies got into the business of selling elaborate poop-scooping technology, most people got over the public embarrassment of bending over and realized that they could reuse all kinds of bags — a fact that may well keep some subscribing to their print newspaper, since Internet news will never be delivered in a handy plastic bag.
Despite how accepted it now is to pick up after your dog, some still resist. Although it has had the law for many years, Paris is still known as a hotbed of scoop-scofflaws, despite a force of around a hundred plainclothes officers tasked with enforcement of this and other littering laws. And even New York recently had to up the fine from $100 to $250 in the face of an increasing number of violations.
But dog poop marches with the times like anything else, and both enforcement and encouragement have gone high-tech. It’s now possible to identify an individual dog’s droppings by DNA, and a company called PooPrints offers its services to property management companies so they can determine who’s neglecting to clean up after their dog in common areas.
Elsewhere, there are attempts to use positive reinforcement: In Mexico City, an Internet company is running a promotion that gives free minutes of Wi-Fi when poop bags are deposited in a special bin. And in Taiwan, one city gave out lottery tickets in exchange for bags of poop with a chance to win a prize of $2,000.
But perhaps the most forward-thinking approach is happening at a dog park in Arizona with a specially designed device that converts dog waste to electricity to power a light. Created by graduate students at Arizona State University, the technology is playfully named Energy Transformation Using Reactive Digestion, or E-TURD. There’s still work to be done to educate dog owners to use it, and it may sound crazy now, but remember: At first, so did the poop-scoop law.
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Under the Dogs (Fouling of Land) Act, failure to clean up became an offence subject to a maximum fine of £1,000. There is also the option of paying a fixed penalty fine of up to £80 rather than going to court.
“I don’t know if you are aware of how much shit is all over the pavements on Highgate Road,” Cara Lorrimer wrote to us, perhaps a tad inelegantly (let’s face it, she may as well call a spade a spade). “But it’s become a real problem. How can this area flourish if we don’t take care of it?”
Did you know, however, that a thousand tonnes of canine excrement is deposited on UK pavements a day by eight million dogs? And we can’t stop reading about poo wars, how sick of it people are, and why nothing is done about it. In Camden, you can even get a pink chalk spray from the council to shame offenders on your street.
Cara stood watching people walk mindlessly along, texting, and daydreaming after a long day at work, and yet “the sign was not noticed. Some girls giggled at the crazy lady making sure the corners were stuck down properly. I counted six people in seconds doing the same dance I did minutes before, and realized my point.”
Oh, and it’s no defence to claim ignorance of either your dog’s actions or the law; neither is having nothing to hand to scoop up the mess. And councils such as Camden have introduced their own methods, such as the spray.
What happens if you don’t pick up dog poop?
Because of their diet, dogs can have up to two and a half times more nitrogen than cows in their waste. If you do not promptly pick up your pet’s poop—it can take a year to naturally decompose—the high nitrogen content can burn your green grass, leaving brown dead spots.