Dog Fouling Gets Red Card
30 March 2007
Hard hitting campaigns have caused a stink in the Bournemouth area in an attempt to deter those wretched dog fouling residents.
The posters with their catchy strap lines 'No'. 'Bull'. and 'Tough'. with a real blob of a dog faeces have angered some residents. The feedback in the community suggested that dog fouling was unacceptable and should not be allowed.
In an effort to crack down on dog fouling the Bournemouth Borough Council street wardens and local police decided to order the straight-talking advertisements from Keep Britain Tidy and place them strategically around the borough to discourage dog owners from not cleaning up after their mutt.
Within days of the public displays going up the council received a couple of complaints and decided it was best to take them down as they were thought to be foul. 94% of councils in the UK employ a Dog Warden to help prevent the mess which costs council taxpayers £28,000 a year to clean up.
Ginette Unsworth, Senior Marketing Manger of Keep Britain Tidy said: "These dynamic images were intended to come with the shock factor otherwise irresponsible dog owners will not take any notice."
"These forceful messages were produced to put a stop to the disgusting behaviour that happens on our streets, and from research we conducted it showed that after the posters were displayed across the country in 2002 there was a 40% reduction in dog fouling. "
The posters have since been displayed by several local authorities across England who ordered the posters from Keep Britain Tidy.
It is an offence, punishable by a fine, to allow a dog to foul the footpath or any other area such as a park. Offenders can be fined up to £1,000, as well as £50 on-the-spot fines. It is estimated that a population of 7 million dogs live within the UK producing 1,000 tonnes of dog poop a day, from which people can contract Toxocariasis which could lead to blindness.
Elsewhere, Yarmouth Borough Council have already put in place CCTV to catch the culprits on the footage naming and shaming them and being able to prosecute them through the magistrates court.
And in Manchester a woman was fined a whopping £800 with another £800 costs for continually letting her pet foul the streets.
Concluded Ginette Unsworth "Everyone benefits from a dog fouling campaign: local authorities won't have to spend as much cleaning up the fouling and the public has a cleaner environment. Yet a minority who complained about the images think it is more disgusting to have dog poo on posters rather than their shoes."