Pet owners can be faced with numerous difficulties, none of which are insurmountable. Each challenge involves the same patience, understanding, (as best can be offered on a human/animal level anyway) and creativity you would likely use in any other area of your everyday life. But I am especially impressed when an individual takes on a challenge most people would steer clear of, or at least step over.
Enter Matthew Mazzotta , a conceptual artist from Cambridge, Massachusetts. His Project Park Spark, funded through MIT and partnered by the City of Cambridge, includes a special "methane digester" that converts poop to power. Well, methane to be exact.
If you're a responsible dog owner out for a walk and your dog does a "doo-doo", which it inevitably will, what do you do (no pun intended) with it? Public garbage containers are not always nearby, and once it's in a baggie you want to be rid of it as fast as possible. In Mazzottas model, the only special equipment a dog owner needs is a biodegradable baggie and a weak nose. Once you've done the right thing and picked up the offending matter off the ground, you toss it into his "methane digester" and you're finished. The container is air-tight so no need to worry about getting too close. Once inside, bacteria break down the organic bonanza into methane which is used to power a nearby lamp.
As a greenhouse gas, methane is far more worse than carbon dioxide. When animal waste enters a landfill, as is usually the case, it just sits there, breaks down, and rises into the atmosphere. As pet ownership becomes more popular, (in 2001 there was an estimated five million dogs in Canada) there are two obvious obvious side effects we are forced to deal with.
Mazzotta is leaving it up to the community to best decide how they would like to use his new method of energy capture. For now, he's lighting a path to a new way of thinking for the people of Cambridge.
Genius.
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