Percentage of pet waste vs. other trash
How much U.S. dog and cat waste is streamed to landfills?
Calculating how much dog and cat waste is streamed to landfills in the U.S. alone is difficult to do and the amount increases each year. There are no comprehensive official statistics, but here is one attempt to quantify trashed pet waste based on available data.
According to a recent American Veterinary Medical Association survey, 43.7% ot households owned at percent owned dogs and 34.1% owned cats. That adds up to 88.9 million dogs and million dogs and 34 million cats.
Disposal of the litter itself presents challenges. According to Judd H. Alexander in 1993’s In Defense of Garbage, Americans dispose of more than 2 million tons of clay litter each year.
Total of 11.6 million tons of dog waste + 5.7 million tons of cat waste and litter = 17.3 million tons of pet waste. Since an estimated 40% of dog owners don't pick up after their dogs, we can subtract 4.6 million tons of abandoned poop from the total for 12.7 million tons. So let's go with a conservative 12 million tons, which lines up well with the two waste audit quotes below.
Pet waste compared to other U.S. waste
When reviewing the data for waste quantities below, keep in mind that anaerobic degradation of organics such as pet waste in landfills results in methane emissions that impact air quality.
“Each ton of organic waste disposed of as landfill and broken down by anaerobic fermentation releases about one ton of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2–e) of greenhouse gases, mostly in the form of methane.” Reducing the environmental impact of manure in 4 steps, Paul N. Cross, Academia, 2027
Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States, accounting for approximately 15.1 percent of these emissions in 2018.
In “Strategies for Reducing Degradable Organic Wastes in Landfills" the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources states: “Current landfill designs and practices do not provide for degradation of landfilled organic wastes within a defined and reasonable timeframe. Un-degraded organic wastes can potentially cause future environmental or economic impacts if the landfill gas and leachate collection and containment systems (cap and/or liner) fail at some time in the future. Potential economic burdens and environmental risks associated with these undegraded wastes will be largely borne by future generations.”
Below: from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: 2018 Facts and Figures about Materials, as posted March 2021
Printed in black: direct data from EPA 2018 Facts and Figures (disposal of traditionally quantified materials)
*estimated amount of dog and cat waste by weight streamed to landfill
**estimated amount of pet waste in residential waste stream reported by Canadian sources
* Six and a half million tons of dog waste plus 3.6 million tons of cat waste plus two million tons of disposed litter totals approximately 12 million tons of pet waste streamed to U.S. landfills each year.
** “We have been doing a series of waste audits on residential garbage. We’ve done two so far and the third is slated to be done August/September of 2018. What we did find in both of those audits, consistently, is that 12 per cent of what is in the residential waste is pet waste.” Susan Grimm, team leader, City of Airdrie (Alberta) Waste and Recycling Services
Summary
This data projection shows that pet waste is under the radar. But the need for accurate data on the quantity and its relationship to other MSW is essential to developing standardized best practices for diverting pet waste from landfills.
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