Do they leave them outside for the whole week? After the trash pickup, I pull it back in behind the fence. My neighbor has had more than one trash can stolen.
Yeah, they stay out the whole week. A couple of neighbors put them back, but the vast majority just leave them in place. The only real risk is when it is windy they can do some traveling. Despite it’s reputation, Petworth is actually a very quiet neighborhood.
One advantage to carrying the waste with you on the rest of the walk is that neighbors will frequently see you carrying bagged dog poop and thus develop confidence that you ARE in fact cleaning up after yourself. When they never see you with a baggie they tend to draw the opposite conclusion.
And it’s not so gross you can’t carry it. Everybody poops, man.
I absolutely refuse to do this, and my wife thinks I’m being uptight, but I thought she would be a minority. I can’t imagine there’s this much support for this. Here’s the thing – some weeks I don’t produce enough trash to warrant putting out the can. I also travel a lot, usually in 2 week increments, so if you drop your poop in my can after the trash has been picked up but before I have a chance to get the can into my garage, it may very well sit there for 3 or 4 weeks. Festering, maybe sitting in an inch of water if the lid was off and it rained. Sitting there stinking in a hot can, waiting for the bag to fail and nasty shit water to start soaking into the plastic of my can.
Even if the bag doesn’t fail, they’re not completely air tight. You’re going to make my garage stink with your dog’s shit. Why do you want to do that to me? Quit being lazy and carry the bag home like I do.
Here’s my rule for when it’s OK:
- If the garbage can is at the curb and still has garbage in it (i.e. will be collected soon).
- If the can is in a permanent outside location, well away from the living part of the house.
Some people store their cans in their garage or backyards near their house, and I think they’d have a valid complaint if you put a smelly bag of dog poop in their garbage if there was a chance they’d have to smell it for the rest of the week. (Yes, I know, garbage itself smells bad but dog poop can be truly foul.) But if the can is going to be collected or lives/near in the driveway, I don’t think you’re being inconsiderate. If anyone bitches at you, point out that at least you’re picking it up and promise not to use their can again in the future. Then throw the poop at them and run.
How far do you people walk your dogs away from your own homes? Is that inconvenient to just carry the dog shit back to your own house and put it in your own can?
Try this:
- Collect some fresh feces in a plastic bag (if you don’t have a dog, I recommend one of those little goldfish nets.)
- Take it for a walk around the neighborhood.
Now, take the same walk without the feces. Which did you enjoy more?
Obviously, it’s not a great hardship to carry the poop back home with you, but neither is it necessarily a hardship on others for a bag of poop to briefly occupy their garbage can.
Your the one with the fucking dog that you have to take for a walk, not me. Carrying his shit in a bag is one of the benefits of dog ownership, apparently.
Pissed off is a bit strong, but someone did this recently to the garbage can I left out and I thought it was rather rude.
They didn’t put it in the can, they just left it in the grass next to the can. When I left my house to go to work I noticed the little “package” lying there and was like 
so I picked it up and put it in my trash can. Minutes later I realized what it was. And then I thought of how rude people can be.
As mentioned above… carry thy poop to thine own trash. It will never be an issue.
OK, there’s one “against”.
I try for commercial appartment dumpsters myself, but if someone has set their garbage out for pickup, I don’t really feel any compunction about adding my little guy’s well-bagged 1.5 ounces. If it were my garbage, I certainly wouldn’t mind others doing this.
Not where I live. The trash belongs to me, until it is transferred to the collection company. Cops have to get warrant for my trash, or a warrant for all the trash in the collection company’s truck/landfill/whatever.
At no time is it ok for someone to steal the recyclable cans from the metal bin, or take my phone records from the paper bin.
I’m also a bit surprised at the support for this activity. My garbage bin is in the garage when it’s not curbside waiting to be collected, so I’m not an advocate of loose garbage of any kind in the bin. I would really not appreciate it if someone’s dog poo broke free there. Most people I see use plastic grocery bags, which are certainly not airtight.
It definitely wouldn’t work in our neighborhood. Our collectors don’t dump the can, they reach in and grab the individual bags. Anything small is left.
Dog poo should stay in the dog’s owner’s yard, fertilizing it. Humans in said yard should watch where they step.
Dogs owned by yardless owners should dump inside the dog owners’ abodes. It is left to the dog owners what to do then.
I called my city (SE Michigan) and asked…was told no rule about poop in trash cans, as far as whoever I talked to knew.
Trash does have to be bagged, no “construction debris” or yard waste; otherwise they’ll pick up about anything, apparently. I’m in a city technically, but it’s not densely populated and close to a lot of farmland. The city doesn’t provide trash cans but pick-up is funded through property taxes, I guess.
“Scrapping” or foraging for saleable metal items or anything of value is common around here - I’m a little north of Flint - and it’s accepted that if you put anything to the curb that might be valuable to someone, it will get picked up. Scrappers know the trash days in the area and cruise the streets on trash days, stopping to pick stuff up. As far as I know that’s legal here. It’s certainly ubiquitous and if there’s a law against it, it’s not enforced.
I suppose I’d be annoyed too if people put a bunch of loosely-bagged shit in my trash can.
I would rather not have dog poop in my can for a few reasons, including some stated upthread: small bags often stick to the bottom of the can and are left to fester; my garbage can must be stored in my garage, which is often very hot and can get stinky; I’d be afraid of the bags breaking in my can; our neighborhood is small and provides dog waste disposal stations.
Having said all that, I’d rather have it in my can than on my lawn.
What the fuck? So one should never take their dog on a walk?
Another rural resident here. By all means, put your dog poop in my trash can when its on the street. I’d much rather it was there then on the ground.
I’ve read this thread and a couple of others with the same topic, and it seems to me that its not so much about poop as it is the storage of garbage cans and how they are emptied that is the issue.
People like me who don’t store our cans close to our house or in a garage and have garbage guys who empty out all the small bags are much more tolerant about it. I think that if I put my cans in the garage, I would not want random bags of poop in them.
Yup, I purchased both of them. I actually purchased them too large (as did another poster, it seems), and the second week that they refused to pick up my trash, they left a note (would have been nice the first week!). I took one back, used the other to store the fake Christmas tree, and bought two smaller ones.
I’m not sure about the recycling containers. They’re little, plastic, color-coordinated boxes. None came with my house, so I choose not to participate, other than for cardboard and yard waste.
Well, yeah, but their arms still have to enter your property, right?
May I express my thanks and admiration for the trouble you take to do the responsible and correct thing? THANK YOU! If only the few bad dog owners would do half as much as you!