Sheffield is ‘producing the third-highest level of dog poo in the UK’ claims report

According to research carried out by dog food firm tails.com, the city is producing the equivalent weight of 17 elephants, but they rated Sheffield only seventh of 10 cities in the UK when to comes to dealing with it.

And they estimate the city’s dog waste will produce 1,510,627kg of the greenhouse gas methane annually.

Sheffield is behind London, reported to have 1,106,096g of dog poo per day (23,364,103 kg of methane each year) and Glasgow, with 91,638g (1,935,667 kg).

The site rated the cities to see what rules and regulations they have in place for dogs in public spaces, marking each city across eight factors, scoring each out of 10, to give a combined score of 80.

The factors were: how many dogs per city, whether they have enforced dog fouling fines and how much they are, how easy it is to report dog fouling, the number of parks in the city, the number of dogs per park, the estimated amount of dog poo per day, and any additional dog walking rules.

They used those to rank each city out of 80. The higher the score out of 80 meant the more the city was doing to tackle dog fouling, which they the report said in turn means less poo being left in the streets.

Newcastle topped the scoreboard with 68 out of 80 with Manchester second with 66 out of 80. Sheffield was seventh of 10 with 51 out of 80.

The figures were calculated through a combination of council website figures, and statistics extrapolated from national averages.

Sheffield Council received 429 dog fouling complaints in 2018.

The authority’s website states it is an offence for a dog owner not to clean up immediately after their dog in public places such as roads, estates, footpaths and parks. Failure to clean up can result in a £50 on-the-spot fine, or prosecution and a fine of up to £1,000.

Click here to report an offence

The council has been approached for comment on the figures.

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Local journalism holds the powerful to account and gives people a voice. Please take out a digital subscription or buy a paper. Thank you. Nancy Fielder, editor.