Causing a stink: Cities taking extreme measures to tackle dog poop epidemic

If you live in a place of clean sidewalks and poo bag dispensers, you might believe this is a world where canine excrement is not an enormously foul public problem. You would be wrong.

Dogs in the United States and across the globe are using streets as their toilets and leaving the mess behind. Pedestrians are stepping in it. Children are possibly being sickened by it. Municipal sanitation departments are being burdened by it.

And so cities are devoting precious brainstorming hours to inventing ever-more-novel ways to combat it.

The latest is Madrid, which this week announced a “shock plan” to force dog owners in two districts to clean up after their pets: Those caught not doing so must either spend a few days as substitute street cleaners or face a US$1,700 fine.

The Spanish capital’s city hall said “there is still excrement in the streets, parks and other places” despite “repeated public awareness campaigns” and the distribution of millions of free poo bags, according to The Guardian.

In 2015, a survey carried out by a British poo bag company – based on its bag sales in 17 countries, so not terribly scientific – concluded that the French were the least likely to pick up their dogs’ waste. People in the United Kingdom were the most likely and Americans came in third.