An Earth-Friendly Way To Pick Up What Your Pets Drop
“Flush Puppies,” a biodegradable, flushable dog poop bag
that apartment and condo-dwelling dog owners can use to pick up their
pet’s droppings and flush them down the toilet rather than stow in their
indoor trash cans. This is a good invention brought into the world.
No More Bags On Windshields
“Sometimes my ex-girlfriend would walk the dogs in the morning and
not know what to do with the poop bags, since it was like a quarter
mile around the back of the apartment building to find the Dumpster,”
Mercer said. “So she’d leave the bags on the windshield of my sports
car. I thought, ‘There has to be a better way.’”
He thought about flushing the bags, but he could find no bags that
dissolved in water. He toyed with a few prototypes, but ran into drawbacks
with each:
•Paper thick enough to hold the droppings would not dissolve fast enough
in a toilet.
•Plastic grocery bags would clog the drain, and probably weren’t good
for plumbing in general.
•Corn starch bags on the market didn’t hold up in field tests.
After some Internet research, he discovered bags made of polyvinyl
alcohol, or PVA. Hospitals often use bags made of PVA because staff
can fill them with dirty linens, then toss the whole bag into washing
machines, where the PVA dissolves in hot water, keeping staff and handling
equipment cleaner.
Mercer contracted with bag engineers to develop material that dissolves
in the cold water of a toilet. Late last year, the first official Flush
Puppies products hit stores and went on sale online:
“It’s a great product, especially with everyone focusing on being more
green and greening their stores,” she said. “I stock it right here at
the register, because it’s a product that tends to need a little bit
of explaining.”
