So you’re out on a late evening walk with your favorite canine pal, enjoying the cool breeze of a nearly-fall evening and people-watching. You’re in the middle of contemplating the zen-like serenity of a stroll through your neighborhood, when Sparky’s back hunches up and he starts bearing down on his back legs. And you think to yourself, quite literally: crap.
What to do with a dog’s stinky business has been a touchy subject for most pet owners. Dragging around a pooper-scooper seems excessive, and chucking plastic baggies in the trash every few blocks doesn’t sound too great for Mother Earth. Well, now there’s a new option: Use that poop to power a streetlight!
Pacific Street Park in Cambridge has a methane digester that does just that. With some holding tanks, a hand crank, and poo-munching bacteria, this digester powers a street lamp with more projects to come. The Park Spark Project, the collective behind the initiative, hopes that the energy produced by the doggie park’s output will be enough to power a tea kettle, popcorn machine, or even projector for movies at the park.
The concept is undoubtedly ingenious, if somewhat cavalier. With everyone hopping on the enviro-conscious train these days, eliminating waste in dog parks seems like a smart, if small, step towards curbing waste. Aside from getting poop out of landfills, dog feces also releases methane over time and can contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. That methane is the power source for the streetlight, which provides a steady light in the evening for all to enjoy.
The only question is: could this be a feasible mainstream alternative to curbing canine waste? It seems that producing a methane digester isn’t incredibly simple, and the production of the whole mechanism seems to be cumbersome. It’s also a real possibility that manufacturing one digester could incur its own carbon footprint, creating an often-seen ironic reversal where something that’s touted as a worthwhile green alternative actually incurs more waste in the long-run.
Still, the project looks like an ambitious, tech-savvy way to get rid of that, well…crap. And plus, if that very crap is going to help power an ice-cream cart for me to enjoy, I can’t really say no.
