37. Eco-pets - reducing your pet’s carbon pawprint

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James Piper: Hello. Welcome to Talking Rubbish, a weekly podcast el deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and one sided stories. In this episode we will discuss how pet food pouches are recycled. How do we improve the carbon paw prints of our pets? Are, old dog toys rubbish or not? And I have a question about whether you can add a pet poo to your compost bin. I'm Joe's Piper, author of the Rubbish Book, and I'm joined by Robby Stanifforff, my far from rubbish friend. Hi, Robbie. Woof. Do you think our listeners have noticed the, theme of today? That felt like a lot of think I said pet like I don't know how many times I said it there.

Robbie Staniforth: We're gonna say it a few more times before the end of the, episode.

James Piper: Yes. Happy National Pet Day for tomorrow. If you're listening to this, when this episode goes live, we had lots and lots of people right in over the past few months saying, when are you going toa do an episode about pets?

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. Pets are big, aren't they? In the UK particularly?

James Piper: Absolutely. And so I had a look at when National Pet day was. It's April 11th. This episode goes out on April 10th. Happy National Pet Day to all who celebrate. But first, we're going to not talk about pets. I can't even make this about pets. Maybe they'll be way.

Did Net zero cause the Heathrow shutdown? Robbie Keane asks. So I'm gonna start with a question, Robbie

So I'm gonna start with a question, Robbie. Did Net zero cause the Heathrow shutdown? How are we gonna make this about pets?

Robbie Staniforth: Sounds a pretty tortuous one, doesn't it? Net zero? I'm not sure that has anything to do with the Heathrow shutdown, does it?

James Piper: Yeah. So this is like a mini trash talk because u, it's super interesting. It's how the media can skew things, how different people can skew things. And I just thought it was worth talking about.

Robbie Staniforth: It was massive news, wasn't it? And just literally on that day, my partner was flying out from Gatwick.

James Piper: Oh, really?

Robbie Staniforth: So she was so lucky. Yeah. She got to the coach station and they were like, nobody's going to Heathrow. It was massive news, wasn't it?

James Piper: well, yeah. So what happened is a substation caught fire. So a substation down the road from Heathrow caught fire and that meant that Heathrow could not safely be open. I believe there were two substations that it could have used as backups. But it takes a while to shut everything down, restart all the system. So it's not literally they lost power. It's more they lost power and then to do the backups just takes a long time. There was a really, really interesting story that came out about Net Zero causing this and so I thought it would d be just worth spending five minutes talking about this. And I've got to thank Emma. Ah. Because I saw this on X and Emma has a website called Monk Debunks. So just great. A little blog of like when she sees a news story that she's like that's not true, she writes a story about it and I really enjoyed her one on Net Zero causing the Heaprowra shutdown. So I thought I'd just summarise it here. But please head over to that website and thank you Emma for putting all the work in. Basically, as we said, there was a fire at electrical substation. It caused Heathrow Airport, which is one of the busiest airports in the world, to shut down. Now all of this starts with a Telegraph article and interestingly, what Emma had done and what I'm going to do, you know, I've become an investigative journalist.

Robbie Staniforth: Absolutely. Yeah.

James Piper: we talked about this last week how an actual investigative journalist said oh, you're becoming one. I was like, yes.

Robbie Staniforth: Starting to self identify as a journal. Very good.

James Piper: What Emma had done is looked at the evolution of this specific Telegraph Telegraph article through the day. So you can obviously use the web archives to go, okay, let's go back a bit. Let's see what this used to look like. This article, the first title, as in when the news first broke, the thing that the Telegraph started with was Huge Fire rages Electrical substitation after explosion. Pretty accurate. That's what happened. Y second title. So a bit later in the day when they've got a bit more info, why was Heathrow so vulnerable to substation fire? Okay, we're starting to get into the like, what does this mean? What's happened? You know, why was it vulnerable? So it's a bit less reported, more a question.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: So the second article has a really important point about the backup generators. So again, they weren't sure whether the backup generators were impacted by the fire, but they did include a line that said backup generators are mainly used for lighting and are not able to run the airport. Okay, so in this first article it's like fire happened, Heathrow shut down. Completely accurate. Second article, why did it happen? Okay, so we're adding a bit more info, but the main info is backup generators cannot run Heathrow. Yeah, okay, sure. Third title later in the day, Heathrow fors to shut down because of Net zero. Okay. Now this is because of Richard Tice, who is a GB News presenter and Reform mp. So hear I would put him on the right hand side of politics. He's a GB News is a, what would you say, a right wing political news show in the uk and Reform is our, kind of very right wing party. So he reported on GB News that he'd spoken to an unnamed industry expert who told

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James Piper: him that the airport closure was down to a decision to replace all the diesel backup generators with biomass ones in order to hit net zero targets. The third Telegraph article had the first six paragraphs dedicated to Richard Tys's theory. So Richard Tys had said these backup generators, they were moving to BioMass, which is net zero, rather than diesel, so they weren't being used correctly and therefore he threw shut down. Even though the second Telegraph article, as in the same article, but the second iteration of the same article said the backup generators cannot power Heathrow. Oh my goodness. And the BBC said this. The BBC said Heathrow uses as much energy as a small city, so it's not possible for it to have the backup power by itself to run its operation safely. Now the shocking bit about this, the most interesting bit for us and our future episodes is so Richard Tice said, unnamed source. This is what's happened. Telegraph then reported Richard Tice's comments. Yeah, Richard Tice then tweeted the Telegraph article going, see, I told you it was true.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, that's great.

James Piper: You just despair. The new way of doing journalism or media is to come up with a theory. Say your theory, get the newspaper to write about the theory and then share the newspaper to prove that what you were saying was true and then rinse and repeat.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, God. And this is the kind of reporting ones up against when it comes to like Net zero, which was a total irrelevance to any of this story.

James Piper: Well, yeah, and recycling and all sorts of things. We see this all the time where people say, like Musk famously xing out recycling is pointless. It's like someone's going to write about that and then everyone gets to tweet saying, told you it was true because he said it was. And now the newspapers are reporting it. Just thought it was a fun story. Thank you so much, Emma, for sharing all the detail on that. I enjoyed going through that one. Additions and corrections.

Millions of UK tyres meant for recycling were sent to furnaces in India

So there was a news story this week, Robbie, on the BBC about tyres.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes, I saw that one.

James Piper: Did you see it? We've got quite big, actually. Millions of UK tyres meant for recycling were sent to furnaces in India. Now, this was a BBC investigation and follows on from you doing your Talk in episode 32, Robbie, where you told us about Tys. I guess the news to me was half our Tys go to India is basically what was B article saying. And I remember being shocked when you told me the export percentage of Tres, which I think you said was like two thirds in your episode.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that's right.

James Piper: Unbelievable. Anyway, I haven't got a response to this story. I'm just acknowledging it. I think one of the things we need to do is dig into the economics of tyres. I think we should do this as a trash talk because what the BBC was saying is many UK businesses will bail tyres and send them to India because it's more profitable. And I guess I was just like, how is that more. Prof. How is it more profitable to send it to India for incineration than to shred it and actually use it as a product? That is because that goes against everything I know about recycling. Recycling is generally more profitable than incineration. It's not always the case, but certainly with a clean stream that is being disposed of correctly, sorted and collected correctly from a mechanic or a garage. I don't understand how that's the case. So we're going to go and do some digging. I'm going to find out how much a ty is worth if you export it to India and I'm going to find out how much a ty is worth if you recycle it in the uk because I'm not sure I believe this. And to be clear, the Indian government have made, it illegal for imported tyres to be used for pyrolysis, which is what the article was doing. So this is illegal?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, it absolutely is. But it's about can you enforce it? And obviously their regulation is there but they're not enforcing it.

James Piper: Yeah, it's an interesting story. So I'm annoyed it feels mad when we're paying to have them removed, that they're not being disposed to correly. I would much rather pay my garage because how often am I changing a tire? You know, I don't know. One every few years? Y. yeah, one a year or every couple of years. And an average, you know, I would much rather pay 10, 20 pounds than 5 pounds with a guarantee that it was going to get recycled. And I'm annoyed that for something that I pay to have taken away, I don't get an element of choice as to what happens to it. So anyway, just an observation acknowledging the new Story having a bit of a discussion on it and then I think we need to do a proper trash talk on this in the future.

Robbie takes a look at bins in the demilitarised zone

And Robbie, you know, we like to talk about bins. Well, I think we have had a picture of a bin from the oddest place we're ever going to get a picture with the bin. Unless there's bins in Antarctica, which I don't think there are. I've been there. I didn't see any. Liz, friend of the podcast Liz.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: Has sent me a picture from the demilitarised zone between North Korea and South Korea.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, wow. Okay. And so what? There's a whole load of bins stacked up in that sort of no man's land.

James Piper: It's just amazing. You wouldn't think there are been. So this was in the South Korean buffer zone called the civilian control zone. Liz had to go through military checks, cross the Unification

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James Piper: bridge to get into the zone and found a bin next to a cafe and they were doing recycling. I was, I just absolutely amazed. Now, the thing is, I couldn't quite understand. I think there's something that's been lost in translation on these bins because they're doing really good separation. But I couldn't work out where I would put everything because there's basically one bin that says bottle and cans. So I'm sort of okay with that. I think it's glass bottles and cans. That one's okay. Next to that it says Clear pet.

Robbie Staniforth: So what, plastic bottles?

James Piper: Yeah. National Pet Day.

Robbie Staniforth: Ah. pet. Very good. So what we've got to call it PET for this.

James Piper: Yeah. So clear PET is next to the bottle and can. So that's going to, you know, that's going to be your bottles then next. That is vinyl. Now we're starting to lose me here because I don't know what would I put in there. So that would be, I mean, technically PVC polyvinyl chloride. But I suspect that what they mean is like carrier bags and soft plastics. Certainly there's a picture of a carrier bag, so that's my guess. Next to that is plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, what other plastic? What?

James Piper: Yeah. So we've got three plastic bins. Plastic, vinyl, clear pet. I guess my only observation here is it goes from left to right. So on the left is plastic. Next to that is vinyl. Next to that is clear pet. Next that is bottle and cans, left to right. And what people tend to do is they look in the left bin first and then go right. So if I saw a left bin that had plastic and I was holding A bottle, I just chuck it in the plastic bin. So what you want to do is have your most specific waste stream on the left hand side.

Robbie Staniforth: so you would have observation clear.

James Piper: Pet on the left, then vinyl, then plastic would get you better quality recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: The clear ple would end up just being the most similar uniform stream and plastic at the third one would just have everything that's left, basically.

James Piper: Exactly. So thank you so much, Liz. if anyone's got a bin that they think beats the demilitz zone between North Korea and South Korea, feel free to send it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I mean that's going to be tough to beat.

You can join our Discord. The link is in our show notes

James Piper: As always, we'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Ecos Suretyty who are on a mission to rid the world of our necessary packaging. They help brands navigate the tricky world of extended produce responsibility. But that is not all. They also collaborate on some incredible recycling projects and consumer awareness campaigns for those tough to recycle materials. If you're an organisation looking to make smarter packaging choices, check them out. ###courty.com and remember, you can get hold of us at the best places on our Discord, which is just a little forum we have going on where people go in and put things like the demilitari has been up. Anything you've spotted you can put on our Discord. The link is in our show notes. It's super easy to join. Just click the link and you'll be able to get in there and we've got a load of people just chatting about bins and rubbish. So if you're into that, which you probably are because you've got this far, join our Discord. You can also follow us on social media, which is rubbish poodcast across various social platforms. You can email talking rubbishpodcastmail, dot com and everything. We discuss any links to any reports, anything like that. It's all in the link tree, the link of which can be found in our show notes. Rubbish process.

Robbie talks to James about how pet food pouches are recycled

So we're in the middle of textiles. We sort of pause that, because it's National Pet Day and we talked in episode nine, I think about flexible plastic pouches with mentioned that you should take them back to the supermarket but we thoughtie this was a really good opportunity to talk about how the process of pet food pouch recycling actually works. So Robbie, how are pet food pouches recycled?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, this was a great one. So I talked to various different people about pet food pochhes over the last few weeks just to get an idea and really want to zoom in on the system I suppose of disposal app, pets at home. So UK listeners will definitely be familiar with probably the biggest pet retailer in the uk, or at least the biggest brand for pet shops. And basically in 2021 they set up bins, take back bins at their stores, 40 stores to take back specifically these pet food pouches. And way back when they started, what they were looking at is what are we going to do with these pouches? They have an aluminium layer within them as part of, you know, sealing the food and keeping it fresh, etc. And so what happened was they went to an organisation called Envval who invented a process that basically was all it was using feedstock, recycling, advanced recycling, chemical recycling. These terms are used interchangeably but it's not mechanical recycling, it's the stuff that we've talked about previously.

James Piper: But env. I mean em've been around a lot longer. You say 2021 they were putting stuff in stores. I mean I remember seeing Carlos from Envil present well maybe like 10 years ago. So guys, we can recycle these. And he was holding up pouches

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James Piper: Andes. So yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: And Capri's sunn pierce the pouch. That was one of the things as well. Ye.

James Piper: Okay, so they've been around a long time doing this. This is not a new process.

Robbie Staniforth: That's right. But they just applied the process to, in this instance aluminium that is more valuable and therefore was much easier for Envval back then to raise funds and show that it was financially viable because the oil alone that you get out of the process simply wasn't valuable enough. And we've talked a lot about the economics of the end market being important.

James Piper: I do remember this. Yeah. I remember Carlos saying the key for us is flexibles that contain aluminium because the aluminium is so valuable.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, things have moved on since then. I understand because I was talking to him earlier this week and actually it isn't just all about aluminium anymore. They can point their process at just, you know, plastic pouches alone. And I'll talk about that in a second because that's what's happening in the future. But effectively when they started this scheme, they were encouraging pet owners, cat food pouches, dog food pouches. I don't know whether there's any other animals food pouch that comes in those containers. Have you got a pet, James?

James Piper: I've got a cat called Luna.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, of course, Luna, yeah.

James Piper: And I've got a snake called Kaiser. And weirdly I went to pets at home yesterday. Yeah, that snake's been alive for A long time.

Robbie Staniforth: A long time.

James Piper: I think he's. How old is he now? Yeah, he's 18. He can drink.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow.

James Piper: Yeah, he's really old. Yeah. So Kaiser and weirdly I was buying mice for Kaiser yesterday from Pets Home and they come in a little pouch, but it's not aluminium lined.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. So there's pouches for all sorts of stuff, not just dog and cat food. I'm not a big pets guy so, I'm probably not very useful for this episode. So anyway, they'basically encouraged people to take back those pouches once they've used them back to the store and put them into a separate container. And then I was thinking you definitely should wash out the pouch. And I wondered whether people would think that was like not very pleasant or hygienic to have to wash out these pouches. But then I thought any dog owner picks up their own dog's poop. So surely washing out a pet food pouch isn't that disgusting. Would you wash out your pouches for that?

James Piper: Are we only. We only feed la dry food?

Robbie Staniforth: ah, okay.

James Piper: Because I know if we ever fed her, the luxurious, you know, meat in jelly, we d never get her back to dry food again. O so she's always been on dry food. It's super easy for us. Yeah, we don't have to wash anything.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, fine. So anyway, these pouches are going back to store, hopefully clean so that the bin doesn't absolutely stink. And what happens then is when that material gets collected and taken to the at the time, the NVAL site, which is now part of Greenback Recycling Technologies, they're part of a much bigger group and they've got a lot more going on than just these aluminium pouch recycling. But basically what it is, they needed to do very little sorting, sace separating, checking for contamination because apparently the pet owners were really good at presenting clear, uniform, clean material rather than the whole bins being contaminated with all sorts of different plastic. So this was really easy for their process because they didn't have to do much pre sorting. They could literally just feed the plant with this material which then firstly goes into a shredder, shreds it up into small pieces and then it basically goes into a tank which they describe as a microwave oven and there's a microwave generator that's basically taking the atmospheric pressure up to 450 to 550 degrees C. And what that is doing is basically separating out the aluminium that's collected at the bottom of the tank through an airck and that's pulled out. And what the heat basically means that the pyrolysis oil and gas goes out of the top is gas at this stage, but when it condenses, it goes into a separate chamber which gives you a mix of oil and gas. And now the gas itself is then used to generate the electricity, you know, it's burnt, to generate electricity that powers the process. And the oil can go on for sale and distribution. It's just a, what they would call a pyrolysis oil. And the aluminium is aluminium like any other aluminium. They had an output of around 200 tonnes per year and that can go out to be processed and turned back into aluminium products. And so the success of the scheme really was around the fact that actually everything was

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Robbie Staniforth: presented in a very clean way, separate from all sorts of other types of plastics that might have made it much harder to run their process and require more sorting. More sorting means more machines or more people and more time and it becomes more expensive. So it became much more viable, basically, as a consequence of, as I understand it, these pet owners being very fastidious with what they put into those bins when they took them back. I spoke to someone from Nestleer, actually, during this process, because they're a big supplier. Purina, I think, is their brand of, pet food. And they were saying that actually they're trying to get rid of the aluminium out of these pouches. Now there's a whole huge shift towards design for recycling and trying to get these materials to be a single material rather than multi layers with lots of different types of plastic and then maybe aluminium within them. So this is in some ways a little bit outdated because the world is moving on and over the next five to 10 years, what you'll see is these pouches for things like pet food will become much more of a uniform and easier to deal with, I hope. And I keep my fingers crossed, plastic, because many of the manufacturers are trying to design them to make them much easier to recycle.

James Piper: Yeah, mono material is so important. And I noticed, on Purina, actually, because I obviously look at the cat food brands, they've got recycled content printed on the front, I think. Is it. I'm going to get this wrong now. It's 30 or 40%. I should have looked this morning. That's on the pouch that I buy, the dry food pouch.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So they're able to get, obviously recycled polypropylene, I think is mostly what the pouches are made of, although there are on PT ones to into their pouch and, with the plastic packaging tax in the UK, if they get more than 30% recycled content into those pouches, it means they don't have to pay the tax.

Brand saying 40% recycled plastic on their packaging drives the economics of recycling

James Piper: Yeah. Which is amazing. That's what drives the economics of recycling. Brand saying, we're definitely going to put it on. And when they print it on the front of their packaging, it's very hard for them then to go back and say, oh, actually we're not going to do that anymore. So we love it when we see brands with a big number on the front of their packaging and says, this contains 40% recycled plastic, because it's very hard to go back from. And it means that they're likely to continue doing that regardless of economic conditions. So that's great trash. Haawk.

Over half the global population have a pet at home

So today's trash talk, improving our pets Carbon Pow. Print. Do you like the title, Robie?

Robbie Staniforth: poor print.

James Piper: Yeah, it's good. Eh? As I said, many people have written in over the month saying, when are you going to do a pet episode? We love our pets, but we want to know what to do. And so we thought this was a great time. National Pet Day. Over half the global population have a pet at home.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow.

James Piper: Okay'crazy isn't it?

Robbie Staniforth: Way higher than I thought.

James Piper: And I've been considering getting a dog. So, you know, this is a good opportunity for me to talk about this or to at least do some research, because I was like, what am I going to do if I do get a dog?

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so cat snake and dogs is what you could be.

James Piper: Cat, snake and dog. Yeah, I'm, basically Noah. And honestly, this is so funny, I wish I was making this up, but my friend literally sent a picture the other day of a bottle which said, our bottle range is proudly made from over 50% recycled PET. And literally my friend said that her partner had said she was outraged because she thought pet was pets. This made 50% recycled. It is complicated because they've put the whole phrase in capital letters. So it's not like recycled is lowerase mean pet is up. It's all capital letters. So it does, you know, if you don't know what pet plastic is, it does just say, our, bottle range is proudly made from over 50% recycled PET. And there was this conversation, everyone laughed and someone put that has to go on the podcast. And I thought, well, this is the episode for it. Lovely.

Robbie Staniforth: Here we go.

James Piper: So thank you, Kath, for, not quite understanding or listening to our podcast enough to know what pet is. Yes, in the UK they are estimated to be 12 million dogs and 11 million cats. And whenever we talk about carbon footprints, I tend to dig out my copy of How Bad a Bananas, which is the book I mentioned back in the baby episode. Now this is written by Mike Bernis Lee and back in the baby episode, so episode 21, I said if we ever have him a guest, we know we will have made it because I, I think he's amazing. Well, he's coming on episode 50.

Robbie Staniforth: Whoa.

James Piper: OK. A celebration episode. We've made it to episode 50 so look out for that in what Are We, 37. So in 13 episodes time, Mike Berners Lee will be our guest.

Robbie Staniforth: Just 13 more episodes until we've made it. James.

James Piper: Absolutely. So in How Bad a Bananas, Mike says that a goldfish had 25 kilogrammes

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James Piper: of CO2 annually. So CO2 equivalent. An average sized cat was 310 kilogrammes and an average size dog was 770 kilogrammes. But for a bigger dog like a great Dayane, and that could be as high as two and a half tonnes.

Robbie Staniforth: So the bigger the dog, the more the carbon impact.

James Piper: The bigger carbon pawprint. Yeah. So to put that in perspective.

Robbie Staniforth: Do I to use paw print by the way.

James Piper: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. To put that in perspective, in our baby episode we said the average UK citizen is about 10 tonnes. So if you have a big dog like a Great Dane, it basically has the carbon pawprint of a quarter of an adult.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. Why go.

James Piper: That's putting it in perspective.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. That's pretty high I would say. Although that is a big dog.

James Piper: Yeah. And it's about twice the emissions of an average family car per year. one of my favourite comedy songwriters or come comedians bet he writes songs. Tim Minchion has a song with the lyrics, your dog has a bigger carbon footprint than a four wheel drive. And I always just think of that line whenever I'm thinking about buying a dog.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. And that's true.

James Piper: And it is true.

Robbie Staniforth: Think that's proven that actually having a pet has a higher carbon footprint than a four wheel drive car?

James Piper: About two times. Yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh my God. I'm genuinely shocked by that.

James Piper: Yes. So whilst we could do a breakdown of a goldfish, I think we should probably focused on the biggest a dog. And then we can summarise general pet things. Although I guess a dog isn't the biggest. I don't. I did have a look at horses but only 0.3% of households in the UK have a pet horse, so.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. And we're not sure how many of our listeners whether we're over indexed in horse owners.

James Piper: Let us know if we are. We'll do a horse episode. Right.

First of all, thanks to Philly from Greenpaw Sustainable Dog Training

But we're gonna stick with dogs for now. First of all, I have to thank Philly from Greenpaw Sustainable Dog Training because Philly contacted me back in November, I think as a listener to our show, offered me loads of data on pet ownership because she was really interested in what we were doing. Ye. And she runs, As I said, GreenPR sustainable dog training, which helps dogs and their families build positive relationships while making eco friendly choices. So thanks to Philly for sharing your knowledge. I really appreciate it because it's helped me out with this episode and if any other listeners have a specialty and want us to cover it, just head to the future episode request section of our Discord and let us know. So little plug for Discord there. That's where we, we hunt for episode ideas. So if you have anything you want us to talk about, have a look on that bit of Discord.

There are four main contributors to a dog's carbon paw print

So thank you very much, Philly and all right, the contributors to a dog's carbon paw print. And there's four main ones. So we've got. There's three main ones with carbon pawprint which are diet, poo and toys. So we're going to toysah. Yeah, choice of toys really important now we're going to cover toys in rubbish or not. So we're going to focus on diet and poo. And then the other thing that dogs can do is cause environmental damage, so things like disturbing wildlife, contamination of waterways, all those kind of things. So we're going to talk about those three areas. So we'll talk about diet, poo and environmental damage.

So let's start with diet. Now, I am not going to encourage your pet to go veggie

So let's start with diet. Now, I am not going to encourage your pet to go veggie. That's the first thing. Now, I don't know if you've seen this, Robby. There is an amazing episode of this morning.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: From so in the UK we have this daily show called this Morning which is just like light entertainment. And about six years ago they had an episode where Lucy brought her dog Storm in and Lucy said, my dog's on a vegetarian diet.

Robbie Staniforth: You know, remember this?

James Piper: My dog prefer veggies. So of course this Morning did what any of us would do and they brought out two bowls, one with vegetables, one with meat and they let Storm loose to go and pick whichever bowl Storm wanted. Yeah, I think you can all guess what happened.

Robbie Staniforth: I just went straight for the.

James Piper: Straight for the meat conc. Ate it. my favourite bit is there was a vet there and at one point, Storm sort of went over to the veggie bowl.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: The vet said, oh look, she's mixing it up. And the dog sniffed the veggie bowl, turned her nose up and went back to the meat. It was absolutely amazing. So, yes, anyway, it's fun. We would be mixing veg in with the meat rather than doing it separately. But I think just for the purposes of this, it was quite a humour story. And

Robbie Staniforth: But this is why for Luna then, that you're not giving the two bowls both meat, one with dry, one with wet, because you know she'just go straight for the jelly sort of meat stuff.

James Piper: Yeah, that's right.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, fine. Yeah.

30 to 40% of pet food ends up in waste according to research

So I had just literally last week on my street WhatsApp chat, you know, all the neighbourhood type discussions where bins are quite big on them recycling days, as you can imagine. But so was our local vegan sort of food store. Somebody went in and saw that they were selling vegan cat food and they were absolutely outraged. So I'll read

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this out. Cats are, obligate carnivores. I'm not sure that this would suit them. And then some people dived in and were like, that's 100% animal cruelty. This is preposterous. Like we're messing with Mother Nature type stuff. And because I don't really know pets very much, it was like a whole new topic to me. I'd never even considered the idea that one could feed your pet on a vegetarian diet.

James Piper: Yeah, that's right. And so with a medium sized Labrador, I had a quick look at what their carbon pawprint might be, as in just from food. And what was frustrating here is there were two studies. So one said a medium sized Labrador will generate 60 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide and one said 1600 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide through their food.

Robbie Staniforth: OK. So it's quite a big differ as.

James Piper: Far as I can tell. There's only two major studies that have looked at it and they have massively different results. And so let's just take the lowest end, 60 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide from their food alone. There's 400 million pet dogs worldwide. This would be the equivalent. Just at the lowest end, it would be the equivalent of seven and a half million flights from London to Perth. This is big, you know, what you feed your dog, what you feed your cat, what you feed your guinea pig, your goldfish, they all have an impact on the planet. So when I was trying to Philly about this, or Philly was giving me some information on this And I did some research as well to look at how much dogs can eat a mixed diet. So how much veg can you add in? And I guess the prevailing thought is what a great opportunity to get rid of our food waste. This is actually going to be my biggest reason for getting a dog I think because. But actually when I think about what goes into my foodway spin, it's not very much but it's carrot tops, broccoli stalks, all those kind of things that don't quite make it into me. Although actually broccoli stalks I would always eat. But carrot tops, the ends of things, they can just go straight in the dog food. They're perfect. So I think I can massively reduce my food waste. And in episode nine we estimated that 30 to 40% of food ends up in waste. And a lot of that's in my household. So there is this kind of why aren't we feeding that to our pets? That's what they used to do. That's how back in the day, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, if you had a dog you'd just be feeding it scraps you, it wouldn't have dedicated food. And so they've evolved to just have bits that we've left over. So what a great opportunity to get rid of food waste. Now I was looking at this for Luna because I thought I wonder if I can give my cat food waste. And yes, I think the Internet. No, I'm not I'm going to check this with a vet but they seem to suggest like cook carrots and broccoli would be okay should cook them for cats to make it easier for them to digest. Ok but I think you could add little bits. I mean cats are mostly carnivores as sure WhatsApp, street grouper set but I think little bits could be added to their food. So I might try and get some of my rid of some of my food waste through, through Luna. And I think Philly mentioned that up to 10% of a dog's diet could be varied seasonal vegetable veget, you know, quite a lot really. If you're giving, if you're giving the meat every day, just putting in like 10% of that, 5% of that being made up of vegetables would be pretty good.

Robbie Staniforth: Yesah, sounds like a great idea. Okay, so you can. So it's not just black or white then it's not just I need to have a vegan pet or a meat eating.

James Piper: Correct, just a bit of both and get rid of your food waste. Now the Positive news here.

Robbie Staniforth: Tortur.

James Piper: The positive news here is that pet food meat content is typically a byproduct of the human food production system. So typically pets will get things like offful and things we don't necessarily eat very much of. And I found a stat that said that 20% of all meat and fish production goes to pets. So 20% of meat and fish production goes to pets. But a lot of that is the byproduct that we wouldn't eat. So actually it's not drastically increasing land use or water use because like we're already having it and if the pets weren't eating, it, it would just be thrown away.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm gonna pause you there'by time we got in on the act. So what you're saying is these like really posh foods for animals, pet foods, they're mostly from byprod productss. Even though they seem like, you know, this amazing steak dinner in a can or pouch or whatever. It is mostly byprod productss that wouldn't go into human foods.

James Piper: Yeah, I think so. Although there is a tre. I mean some of it will be very upmarket. And unfortunately there is a trend, or fortunately, depending on which side of this you sit on, there is a trend towards pets eating human grade meat.

Robbie Staniforth: Who.

James Piper: Now we've seen this, lots of pet food companies popping up saying you should be feeding your pets what you would eat. So we're providing you something that looks recognisable. You, you get a part, it's got loads of carrots and broccoli and loads of meat in it and you can recognise the meat and they're saying you could eat that as well. It's human grade. Now

00:35:00

James Piper: that is actually regulated. It actually has to be made in a human grade environment.

Robbie Staniforth: O okay.

James Piper: But that is actually going to have an effect on the environment because what we're doing is stopping that just being a byproduct and taking stuff that we would and could have eaten and we're now giving that to our pets. And so in theory, particularly as human diets change and we eat less meat, you know, we eat more vegetables, that means there will be less byproduct and it will get to the point, I suspect, where livestock will be raised purely for pet food. now that is not necessarily happening at the moment, but that is if you think about the direction of travel with humans eating less meat and with a trend towards people buying human grade meat for their pets, we are getting to a point where it's less about the byproduct and so land use and water use will increase for our pets. Now I've got an opinion on this. There's lots of opinions online that actually giving pets human grade meat is not beneficial. They don't get anything from it. They are not fussy eaters. They don't need it. But I can understand why someone who loves their dog or their cat has said I want to give them the best.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, sure. Wasn't there a CEO or a president or someone who like ate their brands dog food or something for a certain period of time? I'm sure that, I'm sure you've not heard of that one. Okay, well write in any listeners if you are, if you know the story of that CEO. I'm sure they'd like demonstrated how good quality the pet food was by actually eating it for themselves and not just doing it like once at a launch of a pet food event like for.

James Piper: A few days that became their diet.

Robbie Staniforth: I wish I'd done some research for this James, but I'm pretty certain that's true.

James Piper: Why change a winning formula?

Dog food containing insects is available now. You can actually buy that for your dogs now

So there is also a rise in insects as a source of protein. Now this is happening for humans as well. I was listening to off menu this week and they were talk about eating insects. So there is a rise of insects as a source of protein now Dog food containing insects is available now.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. Dogs love eating flies. Do they?

James Piper: Well they're not going to be fussy. They don't know it's just meat. It's just meat. And one kilogramme of insect protein emits 25 times less than the same weight of beef. And so basically it's 25 times better in terms of impact but it also uses 150 times less land and 12 times less water. So insect food is definitely, we know that's a trajectory that we're heading in eventually and lab grown meat and all these things to avoid land use. We know we're heading in that direction. You can actually buy that for that for your dogs now. So I guess in summary, it's just worth saying for the diet bit, rearing of beef has the highest impact on the environment compared to something like chicken or insects. And personally when I get a dog I'm going to be exploring how to get food waste into their diet and looking at insect based protein.

Do not buy compostable dog bags or anything fancy

Let's talk poo.

Robbie Staniforth: So we've talked about what goes into your pet, now let's talk about what's coming out.

James Piper: Yep, ten hours later, here we are. So we're going to talk about poo. And compost as part of the rubbish question. So let's not talk too much about compost. But I guess the first thing to say is if you're out and about, you should be picking up your dog poo.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, for sure. I was chatting with someone from Westernur Arboretum yesterday and they were saying how tough it is to get people to do the right thing with their, handling their dog poo and putting it in the right place. They said that dog walkers get so used to a been being in a certain place that when one tipped over and was no longer in use, instead of going to the next dog poo bin, which isn't that much further, people just placed the bags where there was once a bin. and that's how big the habit forming is.

James Piper: Wow. So yes, so there's this, you know, the flick and stick method. Have you heard of this? Which is a bit popular or what? Certainly was popular a few years ago. This idea, hey, don't get a bag, don't get plastic, just get a stick, flick the poo into the bushes so no one stands on it. But hey, it's just going into the environment. We should not be doing that. It destabilises ecosystems, particularly with a dog that has flea and worm treatment. It can cause real issues to the environment. So never just flick your poo into a bush and say hey, that's human or otherwise. M say hey, that would be allright for the environment. No, we need to be picking it up. So if we're picking it up and putting it into a plastic bag. What kind of bag? Well, I guess.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh gosh, we're into compostables or something here. James, we've it in the air.

James Piper: Yeah, we've covered this. We covered it in episode 32 with Andy and her bin liners. It's the same advice. Do not buy compostable dog bags or anything fancy, biodegradable, anything like that. Waste of money, completely unnecessary and actually affects the recycling system. The best thing to do is look for dog poo bags

00:40:00

James Piper: that contain high recycled content. The dog poo that you put in the bin is not going to be composted or broken down. It's going for incineration or landfill. There's no point buying fancy plastic. And if you buy recycled plastic, if you buy bags that contain recycled plastic, you are actually driving the economy of plastic recycling. We've talked about this before. If we're going to recycle our plastic, it needs to be made into something that people buy. And so when we talk about bin liners, we talk about bags or dog poo bags. Always use a bag that just contains high recycled content. Don't be lured into these environmental claims of compostable bags or biodegradable bags or whatever it is. They all have a much higher carbon footprint or poolprint. No, these are footprint. This is human. They all have a much higher carbon footprint and then are sent off for landfillerineation. I was looking at a company called Bico who have bags made from 100% recycled content and they're pretty open in their FAQs about why they don't make biodegradable bags. So I was very impressed with Biko for the bags. They are in my bad books because they also sell dog wipes. Now what the hell is this product? Shocking. Anyway, we're going toa move off poo. Don't buy dog wipes. Use a towel, you don't need them. So it is a good example though of how a company I think does a really good job on one product. You know, hundred percent recycled content. It literally says in we FAQs, this is why we don't do biodegradable. And then you click to a different bit of their website and it say oh yeah, and we also sell dog wipes. So you've got to be consistent. If you're a company that's going to do the right thing, you've got to make sure every product you sell is sensible, logical and also environmentally friendly.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. When it comes to those bags as well, there aren't that many uses for recycled plastic like food contact type things to put recycled plastic back into food, contact packaging, it's really hard and technical. Whereas a very simple product like a dog poo bag, you can have 100% recycled content in it. It's a great use for all of the plastic that you're just putting in your bin at home and hoping it finds its way to something. 100% recycled content bag is the perfect.

James Piper: destination and environmental damage.

Off lead dogs are the cause of 40% of wildlife disturbances, study finds

So the final one of the three. So we've done diet and poo, now we're into environmental damage. Off lead dogs are the cause of 40% of wildlife disturbances. I couldn't believe that. And on lead dogs are responsible for just 5%. So the solution here is to use a long line and use less wild areas. So go to dog friendly parks rather than places where cows might be, for example. And Gloucester Wildlife Trust actually said long lines help prevent dogs from jumping into ponds during warts, which also protects aquatic wildlife and reduces water pollution. From fleas, insecticides. So one of the things I'm going to remember when I get a dog is, okay, this dog has insecticides and that can have a big impact on the environment if they're getting into waterways or if they're roaming free. So it's just quite interesting. And the Countryside and rights away Act 2000 states that you must keep your dog on a lead no longer than 2 metres between 1 March and 31 July and when you're on open access land, and that is because in springtime, so around that time it's like the breeding season and they don't want dogs getting out and disturbing wildlife.

Robbie Staniforth: okay. Because that will interrupt like how many of a certain species comes out, into the next season kind of thing.

James Piper: Yes, that's right. I'm going to put a little bonus in here because I have not forgotten about our, small animals.

In Bristol you can actually put bedding in the garden waste

So I'm going to just quickly talk about bedding.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, okay.

James Piper: Now this is relevant for Kaiser. He obviously has bedding in his cage.

Robbie Staniforth: We also talked about bedding in the textiles episode.

James Piper: s very back.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, yeah, Y nice. Back to the duvets and pillows you can use for animal bedding.

James Piper: Yeah, absolutely. So I had a quick look. In Bristol you can actually put bedding in the garden waste and it's worth checking with councils. I'm not sure they all accept it. I found lots of councils that will accept it, but have a little look on their website to see whether you can put bedding into garden waste. Now the key here is that they have to be fed on a vegetarian diet. So actually Kaiser, as much as I try and feed them carrots, he's not that interested. Kaiser's beding guy. Yeah, Kaiser's bedding is go. Goingna have to go in the general bin because he's obviously fed a meat diet. but yes, if they're fed a vegetarian, diet, then you should be able to put it in the garden waste. So this could include pets like gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits. Yeah, I just thought that was quite interesting. I didn't actually know that because I'm not allowed to do it for Kaiser. So I haven't looked it up before actually.

Robbie Staniforth: A bit of straw and sawdust will make your food waste bin a bit nicer as well to be hon Garden waste being a bit nicer because it dries things out.

James Piper: Brown or green?

Robbie Staniforth: Brown.

James Piper: Oh, you knew I was goingn ask that. Great. So just to summarise this whole section, we covered a Few things there. Reduce food waste by adding it to your pet's food. Ensure meat BYPR productss are part of their diet and consider whether human grade is something you actually need to do.

00:45:00

James Piper: Look into other forms of protein like insects. Remember to pick up poo and always use recycled content in your plastic bags rather than biodegradable. Possible. And reduce environmental disturbance by using a lead, particularly in the spring. Happy National Pet Day. Rubbish or Not.

Robbie was intrigued to find out whether old tennis balls were recyclable

Now, as I said, you might wonder why we didn't talk about toys in the last section, and that's because it's this week's Rubbish or Not. I was intrigued to find out whether old tennis balls, dog toys, those kind of things were recyclable. Robbie, what'd you reckon?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, I mean, they get absolutely chewed to bits, don't they? They're good for nothing. I would say rubbish.

James Piper: Yeah. I'm gonna agree with you. I'm not falling into the rubber trap here like I did with the hot water, because a lot of them are made of rubber and I don't want to be in trouble again. So, yeah, I agree with you. I think it's mostly rubbish. I found animal shelters that might take them, so, you know, if they're in a reasonable condition, it's definitely worth phoning local animal shelters, seeing if they want them. I did actually find a website, which I quite liked, suggesting homeless shelters might take them because many homeless people have pets who need support and they might be willing to take them, to give them toys. So that was. I thought that was a really nice suggestion. Obviously, anything that you can remove from a pet toy, like bits of wood or fabric, could be recycled. See the relevant Talking Rubbish episode. That could go to a local Civver community site. Plastic toys are a little bit more challenging. It's hard to know what plastic they're made of and there's quite a few plastics that aren't recycled if they're toys. So, yeah, one option available to us, which I did have a look at, was Terror Cycle. So, again, I continue to say we're going to do a Terror Hucle episode, which we will, but they do have a pet product box that you could order. I think it's mostly for vets, but, I mean, in theory you could have one in your house. I mean, it was 155 pounds for about 60 toys, which was 2 pounds. 58 a toy. And I thought, that's probably more expensive than the toy itself. We're going to be paying more to get it recycled than the toy cost.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I'm not sure that sounds a very viable option. But these plastic toys, I mean are they really needed?

James Piper: Yeah, I'm not sure how many people are going to be doing that, but over consumption of equipment has definitely been encouraged. Harnesses, leads, matching collars, every type of dog toy, dog clothing, you know, it's definitelyast fashion. Oh God. I was trawling through these websites, I was like, oh, maybe I need to get Luna a matching. And you're just like, why am I feeling I'm gonna not buy any of this? So I think, it's very appealing. It's definitely very appealing to give your pet new toys and to get everything matching. But my opinion is buy second hand, buy natural materials, buy from sustainable brands and use things for as long as you can. If your dog doesn't eat everything, then I guess there's opportunities to use old clothing, towels, rifted fabrics, things like that. You can tie it up in a knot and then it becomes a little like a tug toy or something they can pounce on. So yeah, loads and loads of ideas online about how to create sustainable toys. I think the main thing for me is look second hand and look for natural materials where possible. So natural materials would be things like hemp, linen, natural rubber. There are companies that use offuts of the furniture industry, toys made from 100% post consumer recycled plastic. So there's loads of opportunities just to do a proper dig on websites that do sell toys and have a look at what they're made of and focus on naturally materials, recycle content and not matching your dog's lead to its little bandana.

Tennis balls do eventually get depressurized so giving them to dogs is impractical

And what do we think to tennis balls, Robbie?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, so I was, I've been thinking about this quite a lot actually because have playing tennis a little bit myself, they do eventually get depressurized and you just need new, new balls, please. You know, there's a reason they say that because they actually get worn out quite quickly. So giving them to dogs, you know, speak to your local tennis club to go get a ball for your dog rather than buying from a shop. But also even once the dogs chewed the thing, there's a shout out to circular ball who make tennis balls out of 100% recycled content from old tennis balls.

James Piper: O wow.

Robbie Staniforth: So I imagine they can take. Because they're going to shred it up and turn it back into a, into a tennis ball anyway. They can take a ball that's been used by a human to play tennis, then a dog and chewed up a bit and eventually comes to the end of its life. And can go into the bin and go back to circular ball to be recycled. So that's a relatively circular way of getting your little dog ear, tennis ball.

Sophie WhatsApp me saying she puts dog poo in compost bins

James Piper: Robish question. So we actually, for the first time ever, I think for a special, had a relevant question every time I've done a special. The past time I've had to make up the question, but Sophie had actually WhatsApp me saying, I put dog poo

00:50:00

James Piper: in my compost bins, which is hugely controversial. I mix leaves, apples and spent hops. I don't grow food apart from apples, which don't need feeding. I make excellent compost and use hardly any water in the garden. Please advise. Now, this is controversial.

Robbie Staniforth: It doesn't sound right that to me. Dog poo and a compost bin.

James Piper: Wellow, it is interesting. So originally when I asked Philly about this, Philly said, yeah, you could do that, you know, for, Yeah, as long as you weren't growing food that you eat in your garden, I guess in theory you could do it. Which I think is what Sophie saying, look, I don't grow food.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, okay, fine.

James Piper: So it s. It's not passing anything on to me that's bad.

Robbie Staniforth: The compost, you're just spreading it over flowers and shrubs and things and so it doesn't matter.

James Piper: However, I had Ian, friend of the podcast, in the back of my mind because I knew that he'd mentioned this before. So I reached out to him and he said the problem is that dog, cat and fox poo carry a parasite called Toxicara and basically the home composting process, the temperatures are too low to kill that parasite or its eggs. And that means that the compost you produce could spread Toxicara around your garden. And there's an NHS link that I'll put in the link tree as to what that does. And it obviously can be quite bad for humans. So basically what he's saying is there's a parasite that exists in poo occasionally. It doesn't always exist, but it can. And that parasite is not going to get killed by home composting. In theory, it could get killed by industrial composting, but composters do not want po in their system.

Robbie Staniforth: Absolutely, let's be clear on that.

James Piper: So basically, dog pooh should always, if you want to avoid spreading this parasite around, dog pooh should always be disposed of in the general waste bin to be incinerated or landfill. When I sent this to Philly, Philly said, okay, I'm changing my advice. So I think she agrees with it. I think, look, I'll put the NHS link on our website. I think Sophie recognises this is controversial. She said in her text, this is hugely controversial. She said that she doesn't grow food from the compost, so she obviously knows the issue. I think it's going to come down to the person as to whether they want to take that risk or not and, whether they're growing food or not. But I think if I wanted to be safe, which obviously I do when I have a dog, I am extremely likely just to throw that poo directly in the general bin.

This episode focuses on reducing your pets Carbon Pow print

Well, I love a special. I've said it before, I'm sure I'll say it again. It's great to just talk about things under one theme.

Robbie Staniforth: Honestly, so little of that. I know I've never had a pet in my whole life, so I knew absolutely nothing about the right way to go about owning a pet.

James Piper: Yes. So hopefully we've covered a lot of interesting things there in terms of reducing your pets Carbon Pow print. And if you've got anything to add, please feel free to message us because there will be. I know lots of our listeners very passionate about their pets and they will have ideas as to how to reduce paor prints. So if you do have ideas, make sure you're putting them on Discord and we will share them in auditions and corrections in a future episode.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And if you've got some suggestions for what breed of dog, James should get they right in two and let us know that.

James Piper: Very good idea, because I am. Yeah, it's on the list. We got the baby, now we need the dog and then that.

Robbie Staniforth: But that's.

James Piper: That's it. That's like.

Robbie Staniforth: It's a tough decision, what breed to go for. That's one thing I do know about pet ownership. There'sably millions of different types of dogs on there.

James Piper: I've got lots of ideas. But, yes, if you have any nice suggestions, that'd be great. Maybe I'll put a little section on Discord for people to recommend dog breeds to me. Thank you all so much for listening. one of the things I'd love, if you've made it this far into the episode, you'll continue listening to our little outro where we just say goodbye, please leave us a review. We'd be super grateful. So if you could just take a couple of seconds just to give us a star rating on Apple or Spotify. It really helps us to grow. So just a small request to do that if you've made it this far. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for all the engagement. Thank you for everything. And we will see you next week.

Robbie Staniforth: Bye.

00:54:01