Waterloo, Ont. launches animal waste-to-power pilot project
By The Canadian Press Staff.
WATERLOO, Ont. — The Ontario city best known for headquartering BlackBerry may soon be known for an entirely different commodity – dog poop.
Waterloo will soon be the home of a pilot program that will turn dog waste into energy, using a process called anaerobic digestion that happens when organic waste breaks down in an environment without oxygen.
The city’s mayor, Dave Jaworsky, said this is one the first times this sort of program, which he jokingly calls “poop power”, will be implemented in a Canadian city.
Jaworsky said it’s eco-friendly and should help curb the amount of litter produced by the city of about 100,000 people.
“It’s actually a big issue, dog waste. If you look at our municipal litter bins … it’s 40 to 80% dog waste,” he said, adding that the city collects about 115,000 kilograms of trash every year.
He said the process for harvesting dog waste and turning it into power is fairly simple – and it’s not entirely new.
“In rural townships, this isn’t an uncommon technique to deal with manure and that kind of thing,” he says. “So, it’s really just bringing the rural technology to the urban environment.”