Just like humans, pets can leave a fairly sizable impact on
the environment. Fortunately, there are lots of ways we can reduce our pet’s
carbon paw print with minimal effort and minimal sacrifice. Here are a few tips and suggestions to help
you and your pet to live a greener eco-friendly life.
Play Green: When
choosing fun and interactive items for your pets, chose toys and games that are
made from recycled materials. These will be called out on the label or tags.
In addition, there are a few pet toy companies that have made a conscience
choice to manufacture with minimal impact to the environment. Two companies
that come to mind are Planet Dog, which makes their rubber based toy products
with recycled materials and West Paw which manufactures all their products in
the USA in an eco-friendly way.
Walk Green: Hemp,
soy, and recycled plastic bottles are the newest materials used to make eco-
friendly leads and collars. Leads and collars made from these materials are
every bit as strong as synthetic nylon leads and collars and you do not have to
pay a premium to make a green choice when buying these products. What better
way to celebrate Earth Day and every day with your dog then taking in all that Mother
Nature has to offer on a walk or a hike?
Clean Green: What
better way to follow up Walk Green with a few comments about a walk necessity,
poop bags. Not all poop bags are created or degrade equally. Some poop bags are
photo-biodegradable, which means that they need to be exposed to the sun to
degrade and compost. Well the truth is that very few poop bags ever see the
light of day once they hit the trash. So pay attention when purchasing this
walk necessity. Recent changes in the US Federal Trade Commission regulations,
applied to the pet industry mean that many poop bag companies have bags that no
longer meet the regulatory definition of “biodegradable” because the bags can’t
be proven to break down in a specified period of time in a landfill
environment. So you no longer will see the biodegradable claim on many types
of poop bags. The wording now used is “degradable” because some bags do
degrade, but not in the window of time specified by the US Federal Trade
Commission. There are many bags that no longer make any claim about degrading,
this is mostly due to the fact that they contain more plastic and actually do
not break down for years and years in landfills if really at all. A great
degradable bag that also pays attention to green manufacturing is from a
company called EarthRated.
When your pet has accidents at home, you can feel good about
using the old standard clean up solutions like Nature’s Miracle, because these
solutions contain millions of natural enzymes that actually break down
urine. Favorites of ours include Nature’s Miracle, XO, and Miracle Air.
Feed Green: Aside
from the obvious health benefits of feeding a natural, holistic, and
biologically appropriate diet to our beloved pets there is the added benefit of
greatly reduced stool volume. Diets that are free from corn, wheat, soy, animal
by-products, and artificial colors and preservatives are more biologically
available and more completely digested by pets. We all know the adage: garbage
in, garbage out, this is very true with diets that are high in indigestible
grains such as corn and wheat, these undigested grains quite simply are
eliminated and produce much larger and more frequent poops.
Posts
