How to reduce your dog’s carbon paw-print

by jona-huber 25. August 2022 Uncategorized 0

To a significant degree, the environment as well as climate change is shaped by humankind’s relationships to animals. This includes livestock cultivation and related livestock feed production, which occupy a staggering 80% of the world’s agricultural land, an area larger than the continents of South and North America combined. Global livestock production contributes about 18% to greenhouse gas emission, which is why we urgently need to reconsider or dietary choices toward less meat and dairy products if we aim to combat climate change in a meaningful way.

On a much more limited but nonetheless relevant scale, our pets add to our carbon footprint, too. Dogs are the most popular pet worldwide, with an estimated one third of all households having this type of four-legged, furry family member. A recent study assessing the life cycle assessment of dogs concludes that a mid-sized, 15-kilogram specimen emits roughly 8.2 tons of CO² over a 13-year lifespan – close to equaling the emissions caused by the production of a mid-class luxury car (Yavor et al. 2020). In addition to that, the excrement of man’s and woman’s best friend are heavy in phosphorus and nitrogen, which, if too common in the environment, cause eutrophication, also known as nutrient pollution, of water bodies.

Naturally, when it comes to diets, controversial debates seem to be predestined and pet diets are no exception to that. The myth that dog food predominantly, if not only, consists of slaughter waste and thus is sustainable to put to use has long been debunked. Instead, the meat used in dog food production usually stems from factory farming, which is particularly carbon-intensive and associated with all kinds of harmful environmental (and social) consequences. However, advances to feed dogs more well-balanced and vegetable-based food have often been met with harsh criticism and labelled not to be appropriate for the species. This is not to argue that a dog is able to survive on broccoli but suitable alternatives exist.

More important than the specific type of food dogs are the nutrients it contains. In this regard, it is indeed important that the intake is species-appropriate but this does not necessarily imply daily meat consumption. Thousands of years of domestication have led to dogs being omnivores. Thus, dog food based on red lentil, which as a matter of fact is more nutrient-dense than beef and thus a good meat substitute (read about the many benefits of red lentil in a previous post), combined with additional proteins from, for instance, rice and potato can just as well constitute a perfectly healthy diet for any dog. This substantially lowers the carbon paw-print as lentil cultivation, like other legumes, even provide an opportunity for climate change mitigation due to its nitrogen-fixing capacities (with nitrogen being a particularly potent greenhouse gas). Moreover, evidence exists that suitable vegetable-based dog food contains not only more the same amount or more valuable macro- as well as micro-nutrients, but they are also easier to digest and are beneficial to the dogs’ gut health (Cargo-Froom et al. 2019).

Rosa, a healthy three-year old mixed-breed dog, waiting on the signal to devour her lentil-based dried food. With a meat-based diet, Rosa would roughly contribute to 13.7 tons of CO² during her lifetime.

A remaining obstacle, besides the disbelief of dog owners against the possibility of reducing their dog’s meat intake, is the cost of vegetarian-based dog food, which is absurdly more costly compared to the industrially-farmed meat, commonly heavily subsidised. Another alternative is insect-based pet food, which is, although the industry is still in its infancy, another sustainable option of successfully substituting the required nutrients with a significantly lower CO²-balance (Bosch & Swanson 2021).

In addition to that, the aforementioned study also mentions that picking up your dog’s excrement in a plastic bag is significantly better both for climate and environment than leaving it out in the open. And even for that, doggie bags based on maize starch, completely biodegradable, provide an affordable and climate-friendly solution.

Picking up your dog’s excrement far offsets the environmental impacts of plastic waste bags. This impact can be reduced even further by using completely biodegradable waste bags. The ones in the picture are made from maize starch.

Crucially, every contribution matters. It certainly is not the dogs nor any other pet who are responsible for climate change. But they (will) suffer from it, too.

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