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Australia has one of the highest incidences of pet ownership in the world with latest data showing that 63% of the 7.5 million households own a pet. As the dog population in Australia continues to grow, so will the issue of dog 'waste' disposal in a waste management system of increasing urbanisation, a limited amount of suitable park spaces and shrinking landfill sites. On average, a dog produces 0.34 kilograms (kg) of feces per day. Consequently, there is approximately 1,400 tonnes (t) of dog waste to be disposed of every day in Australia; 490,000 tonnes (t) per year. Therefore we want to build an anaerobic methane digester to process the dog waste (and other appropriate wastes) to create a biogas that can serve as renewable energy source to super-power your dog parks. 

"THE smelly scourge of suburban parks and footpaths could soon, literally, be seen in a whole new light. The contraption, called the Park Spark, was devised by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate. Park Spark users put their dogs' waste in biodegradable bags and then into tanks, where a wheel turns to break it down and release methane, which powers a gaslight-style street lantern."

IT'S a problem that besets every urban area: dodging dog droppings on the footpath. Now one town has come up with a clever way to keep doggie doo off its streets - and remind owners of their responsibilities. It sends the offending deposits back to the owners marked "Lost Property".

"Researchers at Stanford University have found a way to harvest considerable amounts of electricity from an unlikely source: poop. In a paper published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Xing Xie and his team of engineers describe a "microbial battery" capable of generating electricity from naturally occurring sewage bacteria."