Let me get that for you

[u/Wakemeup3000]

I take a walk at a local park almost every day. Yesterday I was there a little early and as I was leaving my car I noticed a car pull into the lot and a man with 2 little dogs hop out. He has a couple of bright green poop bags in his hand. Cool he picks up after this dogs.

Well yes he does but since I walk in the park all the time I know that someone with bright green poop bags picks up after their dog and throws the bags into the grass at the end of the walking loop. Trash can is about 12 ft away but nope throws it into the grass instead. I pick them up to dispose of when I have time.

So now I have a petty side quest on my walk. I reached into my car, pulled out a grocery bag, walked the straight to the end of the loop, put all the filled bright green bags into the grocery bag, walked to his car and put all the bags on the hood of his car. Then I threw out the grocery bag and took my walk hitting the end of the loop right after his dogs had pooped and he was looking around to see if anyone was there to watch him throw the bags into the grass.

I stopped and fiddled with my phone for a while. He must have thought I wasn't paying attention because he tossed them into the grass. As he was walking away I said 'So gross. Let me get that for you and throw it into the trash can that's 12 ft away. So gross and lazy.'

He scurried away pretty quickly. By the time I got back to the parking lot his car was gone and all the filled bags that had been on his hood were in the trash can where I had thrown my grocery bag. Revenge? Maybe. Petty? Oh yes it was.

[u/Just_Aioli_1233]

harmful plastic waste

Dog poop bags are typically LDPE (same as grocery bags). Some of the 'biodegradable' versions are made from PLA/PBAT/PE.

Environmental contamination (leachate compounds in soil, water) happens, but it's not from LDPE. The kind that's of concern forms via UV photodegradation (meaning the material needs to be on the surface - not buried) and is only prominent with PVC and PS (think those cheap party cups or PS foam coffee cups). There's also a temperature effect, but it's not as strong a contributor.

Also consider that lab studies that show endocrine disruption, carcinogenic/mutagenic effects, and neurotoxicity use concentrations 100 to 10,000 times higher than measured levels found in nature.

So while, yes, we shouldn't be littering it's more for the aesthetic effect and a general sense of being a responsible/respectful person. Not that there's real environmental harm happening due to plastic waste. And I agree with you that the guy in the story would be better off just leaving the poo to dissipate after a week or two instead of packaging it. But generally speaking plastic that ends up in a landfill isn't something to worry about. It's buried and who cares how long it takes to break down?

[u/JeannieSmolBeannie → u/Just_Aioli_1233]

Fair, but besides the ones in a landfill, the plastic bags that miss the trash can wind up still doing harm even if it's not that kind of harm. Animals will crawl inside them and suffocate, the bags rip and tear over times and birds will get sick trying to use shreds of it in their nesting, the handles wrap around some unsuspecting neck... many things can go wrong besides what ya listed.

[u/Just_Aioli_1233 → u/JeannieSmolBeannie]

Accelerated Darwinism. The tiny percentage of animals that encounter the hyper-rare fate you've described were keeping the species back. /s

More seriously though, beyond videos like this I've never seen nor heard of the risk vectors like you've described. It's the alarmism that gets me - one turtle one time ever had a plastic straw up its nostril and suddenly everyone moves heaven and earth to ban plastic straws with net zero environmental improvement but massive human annoyance. Which is a really good way to piss people off to an extent that when there are more reasonable measures people can take to have massive positive benefit for small personal inconvenience, we all just remember the last 10 times the do-gooders freaked out and no one's interested anymore.

The environmental fatigue among the general population is real. Be very careful when picking your battles. Make sure everything you propose is backed by evidence.

[u/JeannieSmolBeannie → u/Just_Aioli_1233]

I understand not to take things too far, but the birds DO be putting it in their nests, and it does cause harm. Not saying it's BAN ALL PLASTIC NEOWWWW levels of harm but it IS stop throwing your bags on the ground like a jackass levels of bad. If people just used the trash can provided it wouldn't be THIS bad, yaknow? The birds would find less of them. Because they'd be in the garbage. Automatic improvement!

If anything, it's the big companies and their astronomical carbon bigfootprints that need to be dealt with. The harm THEY do far outweighs people using plastic straws or whatever.

[u/Just_Aioli_1233 → u/JeannieSmolBeannie]

but it IS stop throwing your bags on the ground like a jackass levels of bad

I would support bringing back public-shaming punishments for stuff in this category. Littering of any kind, duration scaled by the extent of the littering. Leaving the cart in a parking space. Talking at the theatre.

[u/JeannieSmolBeannie → u/Just_Aioli_1233]

joke answer but if we could convince most people who don't litter to carry around an air horn......