8-year-old girl stuns her community with brilliant innovation to deal with dog waste using milk bottles

Sofia, who owns a fish and a turtle as pets, believed that pet owners had “no excuse” to leave behind the mess.

PUBLISHED 5 HOURS AGO

(L) A dog walker collects waste in a bag, (R) Empty milk bottles. (Representative Cover Image Source: Getty Images | (L) Kinga Krzeminska, (R) Thai Liang Lim)

Dog mess can be annoying for everyday walkers and kids playing on the streets. But one 8-year-old girl is driving change with her nifty innovation. Sofia, who hails from a small town in Wales, is inspiring her local community to actively call out careless dog walkers who leave behind dog waste on the streets. The girl figured dog poop was a hindrance to everyday life and posed hygiene problems in her neighborhood, and decided to do something about the situation. She invented a simple tool with empty milk bottles for dog walkers to use and distributed it across streets, as reported by the BBC.

Woman cleaning up the sidewalk in London. (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | LeoPatrizi)

One day, Sofia was out riding her scooter with friends when she rode through dog poop and went home disturbed by the encounter. Determined to find a resolution before other children experienced the same, the 8-year-old created bag dispensers from clean plastic milk bottles and cable ties, with the bags pushed inside them. She and her mother, Elise, tied the dispensers to lamp-posts with a note urging people to pick up the mess and replace the bags with a spare. Sofia was upset that dog walkers and owners handled their pets’ mess irresponsibly. She attached a note on the dispensers that read, “Do you need a poo bag? Please take one. Do you have a spare bag? Please share one. Please keep our street clean.”

Empty milk bottles lying on the table. (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Capelle.r)

Sofia, who owns a fish and a turtle as pets, believed that pet owners had “no excuse” to leave behind the mess. "There was a lot of poo and people don't care about it — they just leave it or sometimes when they let their dog off the lead, people don't know that they've had a poo, so that's why I wanted these too," she told the outlet. So far, she has made 20 dispensers with the help of her mother and grandmother, working after school and during the weekends. She encouraged dog owners to “pick up” the mess and put it in the bin, regardless of how far the nearest bin may be.

A sign on grass in a neighborhood requests that dog owners please pick up after their pets. (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Patricia Marroquin)

Meanwhile, her work is spreading the word, and more and more people have joined in for the cause. Councillor Steve Bradwick was highly impressed by Sofia’s contributions and wants to nominate her for next year’s local Love Where You Live award. The chairman of the Rhondda Cynon Taf public service committee also acknowledged her noble effort and expressed support. “I'm 100% behind her," he said. "You can put out a hundred bins, but people need to be picking them up. It is really frustrating. Kids get a bashing a lot, and it is a fantastic invention. I hope to see her on Dragons' Den in a few years' time."

Sofia’s mom, Elise, was filled with pride for her daughter’s initiative to help her community. However, she feels frustrated that an 8-year-old had to take the responsibility for careless adults with dogs. "Hopefully, other people in other little towns and villages can add to what we've done now,” she said. The outpouring of support and messages from people willing to help has restored Elise's faith in the upliftment of the community and finally tackling the dog mess situation. BBC Wales News shared an interview with Sofia on Facebook.