Plastic Producing Pets – How to Help Your Fluffy Friends Become Plastic Free
The UK has a mighty 51 million beloved pets, be that rabbits, hamsters, cats, dogs or fish. They give us happiness, love and more often than not, a form of entertainment at their never-ending antics. So what do we give them? Companionship yes, but also plastic toys, plastic fibre beds, plastic wrapped food and plastic homes/cages/kennels. Our pets are a massive consumer of plastic and they don’t even know it! So here is the pet owners’ guide to making a few sustainable swaps on behalf of your furry friend.
Food is probably the best present you can buy any pet, with wagging tails, wiggling noses and excited scampering almost always being the outcome. Yet so many brands wrap their food in plastic packaging or mixed material bags which cannot be recycled. Some researchers have even said they believe the single use wet food pouches to be a more pervasive polluter than single use coffee cups! Fewer than 1 in 20,000 food pouches are recycled in the UK and instead take up valuable space in our landfills. Try keeping an eye out for the larger sacks of food which both last longer and use less packaging. Beco, for example, sell large quantities of dry dog food in paper bags. If your pet really can’t switch from wet to dry food, try buying wet food in tins as opposed to pouches as tins are easily recyclable in almost every neighbourhood. You can stop any leftover bits of food in the tin from going off by using a reusable rubber tin cap which seals in the freshness.
Traditional high street pet shops are actually a pretty good place to search for zero waste items as treats are sold loose and small pet food and sawdust are often sold in large sacks or buckets, meaning you can fill all your reusable containers to your heart’s content and buy completely plastic free. If you want to be a total sustainable warrior, you could even grow some pet snacks in your garden with rabbits loving both lettuce and carrot. They also adore dandelions and what could be easier than growing weeds in your garden? For larger animals like dogs and cats, there are many recipes online for you to make your own treats rather than buying the plastic wrapped alternatives but experts suggest these should only be treats and not full meals as the nutritional value won’t be as good as expertly crafted food.
In your pets’ eyes, the next essential is often toys, although we also seem to love buying our little companions a range of quirky, squeaking plastic objects. However, the switch to an eco-friendly pet toy is probably the easiest swap of the lot with rubber replacing plastic balls and hemp replacing synthetic fabric toys. Kong rubber dog toys appear to be pretty indestructible, even with the most over excited dogs, while Beco uses recycled materials to make their range of exciting goods. Yet pets really aren’t fussed with fancy toys, so to save both plastic and money, you can adapt old pieces of rope or even shiny strips of tinfoil as alternatives to drive both your dog and cat crazy around the house each evening.
Other easy swaps include trading their plastic water or food bowl for a ceramic, metal or bamboo alternative while collars, harnesses and leads can increasingly be found in a range of materials from leather to hemp or even old recycled objects. The Koko Collective create dog collars from old bike tyres and coat them with sari material and the creators of these beautiful designs use the profits to help families climb out of poverty in India. Hemp is also a great choice for both collars and coats as it is strong, washable and naturally antimicrobial to keep all those smells away. Even growing hemp requires very little water and no chemical help in growing quickly which makes it perfect for our planet too.
Animal homes can further easily be fashioned out of simple materials such as wooden chicken coops and rabbit hutches and cat beds made from old pillows and natural fibre soft sheets. Reusing old fabrics will help reduce the amount of plastic wrapped items you buy while using natural materials such as cotton or hemp reduces the long-lasting synthetic microfibres produced by plastics such as nylon and polyester. Hundreds of thousands of these synthetic microfibres pollute the surrounding air with each tumble of the washing machine and whilst invisible to the naked eye, persist for years in our air and oceans. To reduce the number of dog bed washes you have to do altogether, why not try the new plastic free soap bars also now available for pooches as well as humans from brands such as Cocomutts.
Finally, we move on to the most obvious, dog poo bags. 26% of households in the UK own a dog, equating to nine million of man’s best friend who produce 1,000 tonnes of poo every single day! This is why using compostable or biodegradable poo bags is one of the biggest changes you can make. It’s also one of the easiest! Alternative bags are made of resin derived from plants and vegetable oils as opposed to plastic and if left in sunlight and oxygen, they will naturally degrade. However, the downside is that many of these bags end up in landfill where there is no sunlight and very little oxygen, meaning they still persist in our environment for a long time. Our solutions aren’t perfect just yet but new inventions are always on the horizon and we are slowly but surely getting there with your support for these sustainable products helping drive innovation by creative individuals.
To help reduce your consumption, why not scout local charity shops for items like old cages or even use local buy and sell pages or freecycle groups online to get old unwanted items for free which save you money and stops perfectly good items being sent to landfill where they serve no purpose. If you do have to buy from the shops, make sure you buy to last, that means forgoing those festive elf costumes you know your dog will throw off in five seconds anyway. If you’re struggling to find some plastic free alternatives, local brands and pet shops are often a good place to look which stock some quirky handmade or locally based products. Your pet will probably never notice the difference but the beautiful wilder animals roaming our coastlines will most certainly be appreciative of all your efforts as they play amongst the cleaner waves and reefs.
By Neve McCracken-Heywood