Rethinking Waste

I'm always happy when there is a garbage can on my walking route with Elli that I can dump her poop bags into. It saves me from having to find a place to dispose of the smelly bags once I get home.


Artist, Matthew Mazzotta, has been giving this disposal a lot of thought. He came up with a method of using dog poop to light lanterns in a Cambridge dog park.


This is how it works: the “Park Spark” poop converter is actually two steel, 500-gallon oil tanks painted a golden yellow, connected by diagonal black piping and attached to an old gaslight-style street lantern at the Pacific Street Park. 


After the dogs do their business, signs on the tanks instruct owners to use biodegradable bags supplied on site to pick up the poop and deposit it into the left tank. People then turn a wheel to stir its insides, which contain waste and water. Microbes in the waste give off methane, an odourless gas that is fed through the tanks to the lamp and burned off. The park is small but has proven busy enough to ensure a steady supply of fuel. 


Burning the methane, which is 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, helps the environment, he said. And with dogs dropping tons of poop in cities everywhere, he thinks the idea of using its untapped power has broad appeal.