Can I Flush My Dog’s Feces Down the Toilet So It Gets Treated Properly?

There’s a sense among pet owners that our animals’ organic wastes ought to be easy to reintegrate into the larger environment.

The Ross Dog Park (Abby Gordon)
By Marty Smith

Can I flush my dog’s feces down the toilet so it gets treated properly? Would anybody buy special dog toilet paper to pick it up? Isn’t sealing poop in plastic a little bit stupid? —Warm and Steamy

If your plan is to flush your dog’s poop down the toilet, Steamy, I would argue that sealing it in a plastic bag makes at least as much sense as shoving it in your jeans pocket until you get home, but it’s your call.

That said, I think I understand your skepticism: There’s a sense among pet owners that our animals’ organic wastes ought to be easy to reintegrate into the larger environment. Why should we seal them in airtight bags and bury them in landfills when we could simply let them return to the dust from whence they came, like lawn clippings or Stevie Nicks?

Unfortunately, untreated ordure isn’t as wholesome as your mom’s back issues of Mother Earth News might have you believe. Feces-borne microbes can wash into waterways, for example, and sicken swimmers. Even disease-free waste can skew delicate ecosystems—those algae blooms in the Willamette that people ask me about every summer are often caused by “agricultural runoff,” which is the polite term for pig shit.

Given these strictures, some believe that letting pet waste go through the same treatment processes that human waste goes through makes a lot of sense. Both the EPA and the Natural Resources Defense Council have backed the idea of flushing dog poop at various times. In a perfect world, this might well be an effective solution for pet waste disposal.

That said—and I hope everyone is sitting down for this—we don’t live in a perfect world, which is probably why wastewater processors don’t seem as excited about treating pet waste as the NRDC is. You can see their point: Dog poop might do fine in sewers by itself, but how many people will leave it in its little green bag when they flush it? How many cat owners will dump the entire box, litter and all, into the crapper? Do coffee filters count as “special dog toilet paper”?

Finally, there’s the fear that pet waste could contain dangerous bacteria or toxins that might cause unforeseen problems. It’s hard to imagine these being any worse than what comes out of people—one rarely sees dogs snorting meth while huffing starter fluid—but I guess some folks will always choose the devil they know.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

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