Mentor Makes Use of Mutt Mitt

It should be no wonder that the Mutt Mitt, a plastic bag to collect doggy doo, was thought up in a small unincorporated town in rural Kentucky, a place called Rabbit Hash in Boone County, where Lucy Lou, a red and white Border Collie, sits as mayor.

Mutt Mitts were such a good idea that you can now find them in PetSmarts and in Mentor's parks, where dog walkers have easy access to stands full of them.

“When we opened a dog park, it wasn't a second thought to put up a few stands with Mutt Mitts,” said Bob Martin, parks and recreation director for the city. “If you don't supply them, you're going to step in it.”

With these words, Martin found himself an accidental promoter standing in front of the Mutt Mitt booth during the Ohio Parks and Recreation Association's annual conference in Cincinnati last week.

It's a simple solution for a problem that has always existed: how to neatly and efficiently clean up your dog's walk waste. Stick a plastic bag within a second plastic bag — you want to avoid a weak seam when picking up poop; in fact, unlike grocery bags, the Mutt Mitt is seamless — and use the pair like a glove. A pack of 100 costs $16.95 online.

Best of all, in as few as two years, even the bag will be history when it's trashed.

“It's hard to believe that plastic can be biodegradable,” said exhibitor Rod Lukey of Intelligent Products, which developed the product in 1989. “But the way it works in a nutshell: plastic will oxidize like metal rusts, so it will break down in small pieces. An antioxidant is usually added to make plastic more durable, but we do just the opposite, we add pro-oxidants so the plastic breaks down faster and it'll crumble. It gets down to a small enough piece and the microbes, like in a compost, absorb it through the cell wall, attack it with enzymes and break it down into carbon dioxide and water."

Mentor deserves applause for enabling residents to keep their parks clean with this product; Martin said his former employer, Cleveland Metroparks, has done it even longer: "Wouldn't be without 'em. It's one of those expenses you look at and say it has a value, but it's also a service you want to provide."

I also encourage Mutt Mitt users, parks included, to embrace FallenDogs.com, a soon-debuting website that will donate 25 percent of each sale to a charity of your choosing. Funds will benefit service dogs through charities like SupportMilitaryWorkingDogs.org, which makes sure military K9s are well equipped for harsh wartime conditions.

The website itself will be a sacred place where people can share service dog pictures and stories and honor them in a public way, Lukey said.

I say, not bad PR for a hometown that elected its first mayor, Goofy, in 1998.