It’s one of the great modern mysteries of the British countryside: dog poo, carefully bagged… and then ceremoniously hung from a branch like some kind of grotesque woodland ornament.
A decade on from MPs condemning ‘dog poo baubles’ in Parliament, the problem hasn’t gone away – if anything, it’s become part of the scenery.
We dig into the psychology behind this curious habit, the myths of biodegradable bags, and the clever (and sometimes surprising) ways councils are trying to stop it.
Why do people bag dog poo and stick it in a tree?
This is a problem that hasn’t improved in the last decade. This is from former Conservative MP Anne Main during a Westminster debate in 2017, where she urged the government to develop a pragmatic poo strategy: “We’ve seen the phenomenon of the ghastly dog poo bauble. Fellow walkers, cyclists and families out with small children are greeted with lumps of dog faeces wrapped in pink, blue, black, even apricot-coloured bags hanging from bushes and trees. Deers ingest the bags, children may handle the packages… It’s disgusting.”
As I’m sure we’ve all endured, this dangling maze of mess is omnipresent, fuelled by our dogs squeezing out more than 880 tonnes of poop every day. That statistic is from environmental charity ‘Keep Britain Tidy’. The independent body have recognised the problem, running several targeted campaigns that range from menacing – glow-in-the dark eyes staring at the dog walker above the words "We’re watching you!" – to emotive – “Please pick up my poo,” overlain a sad-looking (and frankly disappointed) Boxer.
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It's a problem. But why? Well, there are various reasons from the forgetful to the misguided. The forgetful is simply down to bagging up said poo and tying to the bush or tree with the intention of picking it up on the walk back. That never happens. This isn’t moral failure but is because our brains are bad at remembering future intentions. Distractions and context changes banish low-priority tasks quickly. Hanging the bag tricks the brain into feeling ‘done’, so it drops the reminder. Without a cue or reward, the memory fades fast.
According to Keep Britain Tidy, the frequency of floppy faeces is also a legacy of Covid and that some dog walkers don’t want to touch bins due to a heightened awareness of bacteria and germs, spawned in the pandemic.
Then there’s the misguided. “It’s okay, the bag is biodegradable. When the branch breaks, it’s all good. Our little Shih Tzu will actually be feeding the soil and saving the world.” Is that you? Hands up if so? While they’re up there, please untie your pup’s poo, as you might think, if your memory lets you down, the bag will eventually drop and dissolve. Which might be true but, even if using poop bags, not as quickly as you think.
Do poo bags break down – and if so, does any of this really matter?
Most biodegradable bags only break down swiftly into crumb via industrial compositing facilities hot, moist and packed with microbes. A cold forest floor could see your slowly shredded package sit there for years. Even truly compostable bags shouldn’t be tossed into the wild as dog poo can carry parasites and bacteria harmful to wildlife and water sources. In short, don’t swing it. Bin it!
How can we stop people leaving loaded poo bags in trees?
Surrey County Council clearly have a neuroscientist in their midst, as they’ve planted ‘dog poo trees’ throughout the Surrey Countryside. These are wooden structures “with clear signage” that offer walkers a place to temporary leave their bag of dog waste before collecting it on returning to their car.
Top image credit: Getty Images