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What's the most environmentally friendly pet? What's the least environmentally friendly pet?
Easy Answer: If you consider energy consumption, the humble goldfish takes the top spot. Big dogs are the worst.
Check out our slideshow here.
I turned to Brenda Vale, author of Time to eat the Dog? The real guide to sustainable living, to answer today's questions. And for those dog owners on this National Dog Day, there's some bad news for you.
Here's our brief Q&A.
AH: What's the most environmentally friendly pet?
BV: The smallest vegetarian pet would have the lowest environmental impact. This is because of the land, energy and resources it takes to grow meat as opposed to grains. Thus a goldfish, even allowing for the environmental impact of the tank and the water, has the lowest impact of common pets because it is small, cold blooded, and vegetarian.
AH: What's the least environmentally friendly pet?
BV: This would have to be the largest carnivore and among common pets this would be a large dog, like an Alsatian (German Shepherd). Some people argue that dogs only eat waste meat but this is not really true as all the parts of an animal killed for food could be eaten by people, and certainly are in some societies such as those of China or other Asian countries. In the USA and other western countries mechanically recovered meat is used for things like hamburgers and frankfurters and this comes from the parts of the animal people do not normally eat (offal, brains etc).
AH: How do you determine how environmentally friendly a pet is?
BV: To do this, you undertake a footprint analysis which means looking at the land needed to grow the food and the land needed to 'grow' the energy to produce the food from its raw ingredients to the packaging to the transportation to the journey from shop to home. At the minute energy tends to come from irreplaceable fossil fuels like oil but in the future when these are gone it will have to be grown or come from renewables, which themselves take up land (think of the land absorbed in a hydro-electric scheme or a solar power station for instance).
Thoughts?
Photo credit: Flickr user a_trotskyite.
This article aggrivates me. It's yet another hurdle we dog owners have to face in terms of public acceptance. We're not allowed to walk our dogs in most public places and are constantly feeling left out -- and then this dribble is written to make us feel bad for owning dogs that harm the environment???
Oh puh-lease. If you want to talk about pets not being "environmentally friendly" why don't we talk about babies and the massive amount of diapers being left in landfills -- oh and not to mention the SUVs parents have to have to drive their kids to and from their activities.
I've owned large breed dogs and have kept them on strict organic food diets which does not include crap meat. It's expensive, but real food. If I'm paying good money for this food, my dog and I are entitled to it as much as the "humans" who shell out money for it.
There's so much human food waste and that should be the topic for discussion. Not how dogs suck up resources.
Ummm, did you do any research on horses? I know that city dwellers aren't likely to keep them in their apartments, but they are pets nonetheless. Not only do they eat LOTS of hay and grains that would otherwise go to animals used for food, they take up lots of space that could be producing crops. Horse "ranches" are given a huge loophole to displace farms in areas that are otherwise reserved for agriculture. And horse owners drive back and forth from their urban/suburban homes to ride and tend their horses, usually in large pickups/SUVs that they also use to pull trailers to haul the animals to horse shows in distant venues. Yet somehow these folks have an image of themselves as "more connected" to the land because of their insistence on keeping the animals as pets.
How about chickens? They lay eggs and produce really useful phosphate-rich manure for the veggie garden too!
Of course you do have to be prepared for the fact that they go through chook menopause eventually, and you might have to make an unpleasant choice between pet or omelette, but they are great pet choices, and lots of people keep them here (in Australia), even in urban/suburban backyards.
