It may be eco-friendly, but don’t call it clean energy

Waterloo looks to four-legged residents to fuel pilot program generating power from dog waste

WATERLOO— The Ontario city best known for being home to the BlackBerry may soon be known for an entirely different commodity: dog poop.

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

The city’s mayor, Dave Jaworsky, said this is one of the first examples of the process — which he jokingly calls “poop power” — being implemented in a Canadian city. Jaworsky said it’s eco-friendly and should help curb the amount of litter produced by the municipality of about 100,000 people. “It’s actually a big issue. If you look at our municipal litter bins . . . it’s 40 to 80 per cent dog waste,” he said, adding that the city collects about 115,000 kilograms of trash every year. Jaworsky said the process for harvesting dog waste and turning it into power is fairly simple — and it’s not entirely new. “In rural townships, this isn’t an uncommon technique to deal with manure and that kind of thing,” he said. “So it’s really just bringing the rural technology to the urban environment.”

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

Jaworsky said the receptacle looks like a “rural post box,” but is bright green with a dog-shaped opening.

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 the city to be combined with other organic waste.

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

Jaworsky said the idea for the program came from a local resident who works in general construction and owns a dog.

“He just thought, ‘There must be a better way to do things,’ and came up with this idea,” the mayor said.

He said the man took the idea to the American ground waste company Sutera, which will run the pilot.

Jaworsky said the program may expand into other cities across North America. The project will begin rolling out in the coming weeks in three parks throughout the city — including a leash-free dog park.