A few weeks ago, the following sign popped up on the garbage bin on campus that I pop my dog’s poop down every morning forbidding this practice in the future.
Someone in Not-Bielefeld must be very proud of themselves. They need to work on their punctuation a little but did manage to use the genitive (possessive) case correctly. More importantly, they astutely identified a serious (first-world) problem and acted swiftly upon it! A little grass-roots action to save us from the stuff that kills little grass roots. Too bad that the solution was equally first-world. Instead of actually addressing the fundamental issue of smelly dog poop in a garbage bin, it merely shoved the problem to some other place where the person didn’t have to deal with it anymore. (You know. Like how most people use a leaf-blower.) By contrast, a real solution would have been to appeal to the University to empty the garbage bins more often.
Now, were I to actually pay attention to the sign, the dilemma for me would be what I should do with my dog’s poop. There are only three outdoor garbage bins on the entire campus and I’m pretty sure that using one of the many, many indoor ones would raise a bit of a stink. Leaving the poop where my dog leaves it is illegal and leaving the bag on top of the bin like in the picture obeys the sign, but is probably illegal too.
No, the solution for me in that case would be to adopt the passion Germans have for separating their garbage for recycling. The raw poop and its unleashed smell would go into the organics bin (something that is allowed by the city of Not-Bielefeld) and the poop bag would go into the plastics one.
Hmm …
Not only is this a much more environmentally responsible solution, something that the University is increasingly droning on about of late, but it’s also absolutely in keeping with the tagline of the company whose truck I saw on campus only today: “Everything that is left over after eating”. After all, ignoring the incredibly moronic name of the company (something that is incredibly hard for me to do), if shit isn’t the ultimate leftover tied to eating, what is?
Let’s see how serious they really are about everything …
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