Dog poo is not my favourite subject but it’s an important one because we have to clean up after our dog every day.
On the weekend, I road-tested what is claimed to be “the most efficient ecological pooper scooper on the market” – the SCOOPEASY – all the way from Jerusalem. It is made of recycled cardboard and proven to collect mayonnaise. Look in YouTube under “SCOOPEASY mayo challenge” – cool!
All this poop-scooping investigation got me thinking about how much time I actually spend picking up poo.
I normally use eco-friendly, disposable dog poo bags to clean up after Cruz. It’s supposed to be a quick and easy method. However, as I’m not very coordinated, I sometimes have trouble opening the plastic bag. When I finally get my hand through the bag and start picking up poo, I every so often drop some on the ground and need a second bag to pick it up.
By the time I manage to open the second bag, I’ve got poo on the outside of the first bag (Aaagh) and try to manoeuvre that one inside the second bag, all without getting my hands dirty. Five minutes of acrobatics later, Cruz is lying on the ground taking a nap!
So, when I received the SCOOPEASY to road-test, I wanted to find out if I could half my poo pick-up time and keep myself clean in the process.
First (brace yourselves), I had to calculate how much time it currently takes me to pick up Cruz’s poo. This is not including the poo I pick up once a week from the backyard. (Strange how my husband has a million things to do when it’s his turn.)
On the basis that a dog lives an average of 12 years and defecates about twice a day, the dog will have 8,760 bowel movements in his lifetime. If it takes me an average of 1 minute to pick up poo twice a day (total 2 minutes a day) for 12 years, I would be pooper-scooping approximately 146 hours or 6 (24 hours, round-the-clock) days.
But with the SCOOPEASY, it took me 20 seconds to open the cardboard lips, pull the ‘spade’ off the side of the scooper, scoop the poo into the scooper using the spade, push the lid down shut and pull the handle up for easy carrying. My husband timed it!
And when I turned around asking him to put the SCOOPEASY in the bin for me, he was already rushing back into the house. What the?
SCOOPEASY trial results!
Besides my husband being in trouble for ‘poo disposal’ evasion, I can say pooper-scooping the SCOOPEASY way now represents a saving of 4 (24 hours, round-the-clock) days. I have more than halved my poo pick-up time using this eco-friendly pooper scooper AND kept my hands clean! Woohoo!
Here is a more coordinated video demonstration of how to use SCOOPEASY.
But what impressed me the most is that because of the product’s unique shape, there is no machine that could handle the required folding and gluing. So the inventor, Yishay Gabrieli, teamed up with a rehabilitation centre for the visually impaired in Jerusalem to produce the SCOOPEASY. See video here.
The SCOOPEASY is not only an earth friendly and efficient solution to picking up Cruz’s poo, without getting myself dirty, but it’s also contributing to the community and the visually impaired. It’s got my vote 100%!
Now to get my husband to pick up the poo!
