Germany
Birgit Loff
Frankfurter Rundschau
Berlin is awash in dog doo, said Birgit Loff in the Frankfurter Rundschau. No place escapes decoration: the kids sandbox, the lawns in the parks, even your front steps. Its gotten so bad that Berliners now admit that theyve stopped wearing shoes with treads. Its too disgusting to pick the stuff out. Fining negligent dog owners for failing to dispose of waste doesnt work; its simply too difficult to catch themor rather their dogsin the act. And city officials have already added all the street cleaners and sanitation workers they can afford. So now theyve hired Germanys dog-poop specialists, a firm called City & Dog, to install plastic-bag dispensers all over town. The company sends out statisticians to count the little piles in various neighborhoods and determine which areas need the most attention. On particularly poop-prone streets, workers go person to person, accosting anyone with a dog in tow and pressing several bags upon them. Itll be some time before we see a difference, though. One of the first facts City & Dog established was that Berlins dogs produce 55 tons of poop every single day.