The Bag Is Not the Answer
The Bag Is Not the Answer
I need to talk about something I see everywhere we go. Every trail. Every park. Every campsite. And it is making me absolutely crazy.
The plastic bag of dog poop left on the side of the trail.
I want to understand the logic here. I really do. Because here is what I know:
Dog poop biodegrades. It breaks down. Given some time and some rain, it returns to the earth it came from. Is it pleasant to step in? No. Is it ideal on a high-traffic trail? No. But it is a natural substance that the planet knows how to handle.
A plastic bag does not biodegrade. It is here essentially forever.
So by bagging the poop and leaving the bag, you have taken a temporary problem and made it permanent. You have wrapped something biodegradable in something that will outlast all of us and left it trailside for someone else to deal with. Nobody is going to pick up that bag. There is no trail elf coming through on Tuesdays. It will sit there until it breaks down into microplastics and enters the soil and water anyway — along with everything that was inside it.
This is the solution? This is trail etiquette?
What I Do Instead
I play dog poop croquet.
Find a stick. Fling it far enough off the trail that no one is going to accidentally step in it. Scatter it a little. That poop will be gone in days. The forest floor handles it. Microbes handle it. Rain handles it. Bears have been going in the woods for millions of years and nobody bagged it for them.
Is this the most refined outdoor move? No. Does it work? Absolutely. The poop is gone. No plastic involved. No one trips over a little blue bag sitting in the middle of a root system six months from now.
When to Actually Use the Bag
In a campground with a trash can: bag it and bin it. That is exactly what the bag is for. Proper disposal in a proper receptacle. Perfect.
On a trail miles from any trash can: the bag is not the answer. If you pack it in, pack it out all the way — bag in your pack until you reach a trash can. Or skip the bag altogether and send it off the trail with a stick.
What you cannot do — what makes no logical sense — is bag it and leave the bag.
I Cannot Be the Only One
Amy laughs at me every time I stop to handle someone else’s abandoned bag situation. I don’t find it funny. I find it baffling. We’re out here talking about Leave No Trace, minimum impact, protecting wild places — and then we’re leaving a plastic monument to our dog’s bathroom habits on the trail because we felt like we did the right thing by bagging it.
You didn’t finish the job. Bagging it was step one. Getting it to a trash can is step two. Leaving the bag on the trail is not a step — it’s quitting halfway through and making it worse.
I can’t say people are ignorant because common sense should apply here. The math is not complicated. Biodegradable thing plus non-biodegradable container equals a non-biodegradable problem on the trail. That’s it. That’s the whole equation.
Pack it out. All the way out. Or skip the bag and use a stick.
The trail will thank you. So will everyone running through it at 9pm trying not to step on anything they shouldn’t.
We hike with dogs everywhere we can. The honest version of what that actually looks like: hiking with dogs — what you need to know before you go →. And yes, dogs are banned from trails in Great Smoky Mountains National Park — what we found when we showed up with ours →.
