Page 38 - PET worldwide issue 01/2022

Sustainability

tion that the CO emitted during
2 often, unfortunately, the money ing the targets set. Some com-
production can be cancelled out that companies spend on these panies have already developed
by planting trees doesn’t add up in measures is eaten up in admin- a strategy of this kind and are
many cases. There are more than istration. working to implement it. If they
a few “black sheep” in the lucra- What is better and more sus- succeed in this, they may gain an
tive climate compensation market, tainable is a climate protection advantage over their competitors
projects that have no significant strategy that is holistic, sets vi- that the latter may not be able to
added environmental value or able CO targets, encompasses reduce so quickly. n
2
soon have to be tweaked due to all employees and provides a
their lack of success. And all too made-to-measure plan for attain-

Are dogs bad for the planet?

The impetus for the lively debate on this question among scientists was a guide to sustainability published in 2009 by Robert & Brenda
Vale of New Zealand. In their book with the provocative title “Time to Eat the Dog”, the authors came to the conclusion that a medium-sized
dog caused far more damage to the climate than the manufacture and fuelling of an all-terrain vehicle. In their calculations they took into
account the contents of commercially available food types, the quantity of waste produced by pets and their influence on the wild animal
population. A US study in 2017 came to the conclusion that pets consumed around 20 per cent of the calories consumed by humans
1
annually. The amount of faeces produced by pets equates to roughly 30 per cent of the total quantity produced by humans, according
to the scientists. They were especially critical of the trend towards premium food, which had a higher content of higher-quality meat.
A Swiss publication from 2018 went a step further and covered the bones and raw food diet. “This is where the canine footprint increases
2
considerably. This type of nutrition can virtually triple the canine load,” say the authors. A study by the Technische Universität Berlin dated
August 2020 came to a similar conclusion. “A 15 kg dog that lives for 13 years is responsible for 8.2 t of CO emissions,” they calculated.
3
2
This is equivalent to 13 flights from Berlin to Barcelona.

1 Gregory S. Okin, Environmental im­
pacts of food consumption by dogs
and cats. PLOS ONE, August 2017

2 Annaheim J., Jungbluth N. and Meili
C. (2019) Ökobilanz von Haus­ und
Heimtieren: Überarbeitet und ergän­
zter Bericht (Ecological assessment
of pets: revised and supplemented
report). Internship project at ESU­
services GmbH, Schaffhausen/Swit­
zerland

3 Kim M. Yavor, Annekatrin Lehmann
and Matthias Finkbeiner, Environmen­
tal Impacts of a Pet Dog: An LCA Case
Study. Faculty of Sustainable Engi­
neering of the Technische Universität
Berlin.

Photo: birgl, Pixabay A dog that weighs 15 kg and lives

for 13 years is responsible for
8.2 t of CO emissions, scientists
2
have calculated.

38 PET worldwide 1|2022

PWW2022-01_Buch.indb 38 04.02.2022 09:48:48