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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".

"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."

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. 

"Join the challenge at whattodowithpoo.com/ and come up with a solution for human waste in Nairoba, Kenya. The winning idea will be announced on the International Water Association Development conference in Nairobi and gets 3 months of business development support to develop their idea to a solid business plan! enviu.org."

"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."