r/ausenviro

This guy's references are outta control, really entertaining vid, but also really useful info!

Hello, this is a bit of an honest/confessional post, so please be kind.

My partner and I have a medium-sized dog, and we currently use home-compostable Oh Crap dog poo bags. We usually throw them in the red bin because we don’t currently compost.

My partner feels the fancy bags are too expensive and wants to switch back to regular plastic poo bags, because either way they’re going to landfill. His view is that compostable bags won’t make much difference once they’re buried with other waste.

I don’t really want to go back to plastic. Even if it’s imperfect, I feel better using compostable bags, I believe waste habits still matter at a local/personal level.

The problem is that we’re not very consistent with waste systems. We tried using the small indoor food-waste bin from council, but it got gross quickly and became another mental task to manage. I also have ADHD, so systems that require too many steps tend to fall apart for me.

I’ve wondered about getting a larger hot composting system that could handle dog poo, but my partner is worried we’ll spend a few hundred dollars, use it for a few months, then abandon it and lose garden space. I do love gardening, but I find the idea of carrying our food waste on a cutting mat into the garden everyday to be too much of a hassle.

So my question is: what’s the most realistic lower-waste option for dog poo if we’re not currently good at composting?

Is it still worth using compostable bags in landfill?
Are there easier home to garden composting systems that don’t get gross quickly?
Or is there another option we haven’t thought of?

We’re not zero-waste people, but we’re trying to find a step that is actually sustainable for us.