City to turn dog poop into energy, fertilizer

WATERLOO, Ont. — The Ontario city best known for headquartering BlackBerry may soon be known for an entirely different commodity — dog poop.

Waterloo will soon be the home of a pilot program that will turn dog waste into energy, using a process called anaerobic digestion that happens when organic waste breaks down in an environment without oxygen.

The city’s mayor, Dave Jaworsky, said this is one of the first times this sort of program — which he jokingly calls “poop power” — will be implemented in a Canadian city.

Jaworsky said it’s eco-friendly and should help curb the amount of litter produced by the city of about 100,000 people.

He said the process for harvesting dog waste and turning it into power is fairly simple.

It works like this: a dog-owner walking their pet will scoop up its waste, just like they would normally. But instead of throwing the bag into a trash can, they pop it into a special receptacle.

The bags of dog poop are stored in an underground container for 10 to 14 days, Jaworsky said, and then vacuumed out and sent to a processing plant outside of the city, where it will be combined with other organic waste.

Through anaerobic digestion, it will create a biogas, which can then be burned for heat and energy. Any of the leftover waste is then used for fertilizer.