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Second installment, also from Graham Rust, is an “advanced technology” answer to the Fedog bag set I posted about yesterday.
The most effective solution, Graham wrote, is a team of helmeted guys riding along the pavement on quad bikes equipped with long vacuum cleaners, zapping (rather than “scooping”) the poop, a triumph of form over content.
Then: Rich! By an almost unbelievable coincidence, on the square below our office, Prague’s waste company is running a PR event, and so I have a photograph (above) of the poopzapper to add a multimedia dimension to your blog!
You have the thanks of the world, Graham. Nowhere else (not even on the Prague Municipal Waste Management website – I looked) has this powerful secret weapon in the war against dog poop been revealed. And Prague is doing PR events about it!
This is a simple post about dogs and the people who love them. Sort of. It’s also a post about cities. Human ingenuity. Advertising. Let’s start with the fact that Rob Schoenbeck brought me a pass-along souvenir from his recent trip overseas: a Fedog bag (that’s it on the left).
In Czech, this is papírové sáčky na psí exkrementy – a paper set for dog crap. It was invented in 1995 because, “The daily amount of dogs’ excrements comes up to 20 tons in Prague alone.”
It’s a combination unit, the paper bag plus scooper plus advertising.
See how it works on the website – it offers an animated demo. “The paper bag is easily degradable in the nature. The scoop minimizes the aversion to pick up the excrement. The bag together with its content can be composted. The full bags can disposed of by burning, depositing in dumping grounds or recycled by composing.” I’m not making fun of the English writing here – I couldn’t even start in the original tongue.
I went straight to my long-time Dialogue International resource, Graham Rust, the great and powerful principal of Rust2 in The Czech Republic. He ‘splained:
Prague is plagued with dogs. It’s not like Bucharest which apparently has packs of feral dogs roaming the streets, but like citizens of all around the world, Praguers just don’t see the problem with keeping a huge animal in a fifth floor apartment in the city centre.
Some time ago the city installed special litter bits with bag dispensers (left) and sometimes you even see them being used.
The other glut we suffer from is advertising, on anything which stays still long enough, so it’s no surprise to see someone trying to sell space on this sharply targeted medium. Not sure there will be many takers. Public opinion on advertising is pretty low, but things are not so bad that we deserve a literal interpretation of McCluhan’s “the medium is the message.”
The engineer in me (of which there is precisely none, really) is intrigued with the concept of putting the carboard scooper inside the bag and putting the whole set in a handy dispenser. The city-dweller in me wishes to see this in the US, though we seem more conscious of the effect of many dogs on local sidewalks – and more willing to do something about it at the moment of generation.
The ad guy says, “This is outstanding – for somebody else’s clients.” And actually, I could see some real value if an entire city program was underwritten by a major veterinary clinic in the area or even a dog food manufacturer like Purina®. I can see Nestlé Purina PetCare underwriting an effort like this.
As Graham notes, the Fedog set is a precisely targeted medium – the smart advertiser could use that to its advantage and add a bit more environmental shine to its brand.
As I said, go to Fedog.cz – Czech it out for yourself.
Second installment, also from Graham Rust, is an “advanced technology” answer to the Fedog bag set I posted about yesterday.
