One of the greatest joys of my life has been having two loyal dogs by my side since college. In that time, I’ve bagged and trashed tens of thousands of dog poop bags—as is my civic duty.
Lately, though, I’ve been bugged by something increasingly common in my beautiful Portland neighborhood: poop bags left sitting on the sidewalk, waiting for their owners to maybe come back and throw them away. I genuinely don’t understand the thought process behind this, so I did a quick Google search.
I stumbled onto a Reddit thread where hikers were also noticing this disturbing trend—plastic bags of dog poop left along hiking trails. Some speculated that the bags were left temporarily, to be picked up on the return trip. Others were skeptical, having seen bags that clearly had been sitting for days.
Okay, maybe there’s at least some theory behind a hiker temporarily stashing a bag. But that doesn’t explain the increasing number of abandoned poop bags on the sidewalks of my neighborhood.
Portland, Oregon, is one of the most dog-friendly cities in the country. It’s a mecca where you can take your pup just about anywhere—a paradise for dogs and humans alike to enjoy the stunning nature we’re lucky to be surrounded by. So why, in this liberal dog-loving mecca of mine, am I seeing plastic bags of poop lined up like landmines on the sidewalk?
We Portlanders are better than this.
It makes no sense to let your dog poop, go through the effort of bagging it, and then leave it on the sidewalk for someone else to deal with. Any Portlander will tell you—you’re never more than a block or two away from a trash can or dog waste station. There’s really no excuse.
And if you have zero intention of throwing it away? Honestly, just don’t bag it. Let nature take its course. Let the poop decompose into the earth as God intended. But do not wrap it in plastic and leave it there to sit indefinitely, waiting for another citizen—or some underpaid landscape worker—to pick up after you.
Do better.
Portland has bigger issues to tackle. The very least we can do, as dog owners in an environmentally enlightened city, is either bag and trash our dog’s poop—or leave it unbagged and let it rot.
Don’t be an asshole. Trash your dog’s poop.
