Two Victoria University professors who specialize in sustainable living, say pet owners should swap cats and dogs for creatures they can eat, such as chickens or rabbits, in their new book Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living. Here’s a quote from the article:
The couple has assessed the carbon emissions created by popular pets, taking into account the ingredients of pet food and the land needed to create them.
"If you have a German shepherd or similar-sized dog, for example, its impact every year is exactly the same as driving a large car around," Brenda Vale said.
"A lot of people worry about having SUVs but they don't worry about having Alsatians and what we are saying is, well, maybe you should be because the environmental impact ... is comparable."
In a study published in New Scientist, they calculated a medium dog eats 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kg of cereals every year. It takes 43.3 square meters of land to produce 1 kg of chicken a year. This means it takes 0.84 hectares to feed Fido.
They compared this with the footprint of a Toyota Land Cruiser, driven 10,000 km a year, which uses 55.1 gigajoules (the energy used to build and fuel it). One hectare of land can produce 135 gigajoules a year, which means the vehicle's eco-footprint is 0.41 ha – less than half of the dog's.
They found cats have an eco-footprint of 0.15 ha – slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf. Hamsters have a footprint of 0.014 ha – keeping two of them is equivalent to owning a plasma TV.
