Sustainable Pets | My Zero Waste Dog 

I have a rescued bunny as a pet and everything about the routine with him is easy to make zero waste. When I shop for veggies, I buy in bulk for him and for me. I am also able to get hay in cardboard boxes (with no plastic packaging) from places online like Small Pet Select and the toys and things you may need for them are plastic-free, as plastic is dangerous to have around bunnies, since they may chewy/eat plastic and get blockages. Because bunnies are herbivores, their waste/hay/litter box bedding is easily compostable and I am able to take it to my local compost drop-off. A lot of people may not be aware that bunnies are commonly purchased during the Easter holiday for kids and abandoned shortly after parents ralize that they are not great pets for young children or when they find that their care is more expensive, as they are considered "exotic animals" and must be taken to vets that know how to care for bunnies. Here in the US, there are often rescue groups that take in rabbits and find homes for them. If anyone is interested in a adopting a pet that fits into the zero waste lifestyle, do some research on bunnies to see if its the right thing for you :)

I have a 4 year old corgi who's also very passionate about the environment 😉 I buy some treats in bulk and make the rest myself by dehydrating apples, sweet potatoes and bananas. My city actually allows you to place dog poop in our compost bins as long as it's loose (not in a bag) which is so helpful!

Fur. Good as long fertilizer. Some weave into blankets. Or stuff dog toys, etc. I used it as fertilizer at the bottooom of the pots.

Love the tips! We rescue food from an upscale grocery store and find lots of food for our dog. We do about 20-30% kibble and rest is rescue food. She is healthy and thriving and costs almost nothing to feed 🙌 we also use bread bags / other small plastic bags or little bags people have dropped on the street. To date we have not bought one single poop bag!

The vet my mom uses said most conventional treats are like eating a candy bar.

I don’t have a dog, but the pet food brands were super helpful since they have cat food too! I’ve never really known what to feed my cat to be more sustainable so this was super helpful, thank you!

Open farm and Small Batch are GREAT brands, both for the animals health and the planet

I love this video, thanks so much!

This so helpful, thank you!

My furbaby Indy Rommel 🐾🐶 loves 🥕. We get hand me downs from from her fur-cuz Luna ….❤️🙏🐶🐾

I LOVE this video! Super helpful to learn about some of the sustainable options, would love to see more of these types of videos. I know that Jiminy sells cricket dog treats AND cricket dog food. I love there treats, however, I have not tried their dog food yet.

I'm always happy when you have dog content 😍🐶 We have 3 cats and buy kibble in 10kg bags. The litter comes in paper bags and for wetfood we also try to buy mainly chicken, turkey and duck. We bought it from an organic brand for quite a while but my cats are fussy eater and if they don't like the food they don't eat it. So if they stop eating a certain brand I need to find one they like asap. They normally only accept two or three sorts of one brand for one or two years and wouldn't eat something else when offered until they decided to not like it anymore. I don't want to experiment with kibble, because my one cat has a lot of problems with her digestive system and it's the only food her body is fine with. My old cat is diabetic, so I cannot risk that he's not eating his food, after getting his insulin shots. For scratch posts and trees we buy high quality ones that last us nearly 10 years until we need to replace them. And when it comes to toys my cats aren't really destructive, so they last many years. We buy high quality ones from natural materials. And we only adopt and don't shop all the cats we ever had in my lifetime, we normally adopt the ones with special needs or the shy ones that have a lower chance of finding a home. They are always extremely thankful and loving.

I get the picky eater conundrum... My small Spitz mix is very picky and a light eater to boot. Took a while, but I found a food he loves, Abound grain-free dry, Salmon. It's done wonders with his appetite, and I couldn't be happier. While staying with a friend, her elderly chi kept stealing my dog's food lol, so the little lady got her own bag. Great ingredient list, great price at the supermarket, happy dog & dogmom.

That was so interesting, thank you! Love the poop powered lamp post. Also, for UK people Tesco appear to be recycling pet food pouches!

My dog is also named Nala ❤️

It's sad that I live in Mexico and there's not a lot of sustainable stores on my town. Unless you're in a really expensive area and everything is suuuuper expensive

Ahh love this video! My dog’s name is Nara (a sesame Shiba Inu) and actually looks a bit like Nala! I just switched her over to Open Farm because of their recycling program with terracycle, but also because Nara is a super picky eater so Open Farm’s high quality recipe definitely entices her more than what we had previously bought her. Nara also loves the Chipping dog treats which I was gifted from a local shop! Unfortunately, the other minimal/zero dog treat packaging stores have been closing recently near me.. Additionally to the dog waste, I have been trying to find a good solution, but right now there really aren’t any good options for reducing that paw print (didn’t know about that dog park in England! That is brilliant). Love your videos, keep up the good work!

The brand Westpaw have a circular recycle system! you should go check it out and give us your opinion :)

We feed our dogs a species appropriate diet but it's all human grade food - so I decreased some of our food waste by giving it to our dogs in their meals.

REALLY nice video not sure how I missed it. I try to be as low waste with my pup as well, and really still has many toys let from puppy haul 3 years ago, most of that was second hand. We make our own treats cookies at home and feed Vdog

I like 🐕

As someone that is health conscious as well (including when it comes to our fur babies) I’d love to hear your thoughts on raw feeding pets. There’s this amazing RU-vid channel called “the primal pack” I strongly recommend

Alexis at WhatAboutBunny makes her own treats using minced beef, eggs and cheese. If you buy the ingredients sustainably, and maybe try changing out the beef for chicken or venison, I think you can make even more sustainable treats than what Nala eats now.

I’m so lucky because we have dung beetles in our back yard that eat my puppers poop.

Great informative video. We love Open Farm too and it’s the only one we use. For dog poop, we bring a small hard plastic poop scooper on walks and flush it down the toilet. Waste water and sewage treatment plants are equipped to handle it. We never put it in the landfill since it collectively leads to a lot of methane gas. For walks where I can’t use a poop scoop, I’ll empty a plastic bag with poop in the toilet and reuse it for more walks.

If we can use methane to power light, then can we use methane from the landfill to power our homes?

In my area it is so easy to get second hand dog items in a buy nothing or swap group so I’ve gotten a few toys, harness, and collars. Some didn’t work for my dog so I passed it along and didn’t create more purchase demand in the process. The one toy I did buy was a BeccoBone which is made from recycled rubber and is the only indestructible toy for my dog he loves it and it has some space to stuff treats. it’s lasted the 1.5 yrs I’ve had him when a few other ‘tough’ toys unfortunately didn’t make it.

I pick up my dogs poop in the garden with a little spade and a dust pan then put it into the toilet and flush!

I LOVE THAT INTROOOO

Awesome tips! We feed our GSD a mix of kangaroo meat (really low carbon footprint), offal, veg, a few berries once in a while, sardines and chicken necks (by product). I definitely wouldn't recommend chicken necks for smaller dogs though, you can get into some serious trouble. If she has kibble it's usually Ziwipeak. I now need to look up the brands environment policy! I didn't know compostable bags needed heat to decompose. That's so frustrating. I just checked my local council and they accept dog poop in the Green Waste bin. In the whole state! Nice!

Hmmm. I wouldn't say that commercial turkey and chicken are low waste and ecological...