Call for a pickup

What do you get when you combine people too busy to look up from their smartphones, and 78 million pet dogs? You get Pooper, an American app that summons someone to scoop your pooch’s waste off the footpath or neighbour’s lawn. Once your dog does its job, you open the app, pinpoint the excrement on a digital map and order a scooper. You are then free to leave while the scooper comes to do the cleanup. Co-founder Ben Becker said Pooper was what America needed, because there was too much dog waste on the nation’s streets. He said people ‘‘by the hundreds’’ had signed up to be both poopers (customers) and scoopers (employees).