We have a puppy, and unlike my pervious fur friends (cats), she needs to eliminate in the great outdoors, about 3x a day. To cut down on waste (literally) our housing complex provides doggy-do bags — dark plastic — which is great, as we don’t get plastic bags from the grocery store.

Right next to our house is a small patch of ‘wetlands.’ Wetlands is in quotes because its treated a lot like the other landscaping here — it abuts a schoolyard field that is planted and fertilized to some degree, weeds are mown down 3-4x a year, it gets rain run off from the streets . . . As far as I can tell a developer got a tax break for calling a 50×25 patch a wetlands.

J. has started taking the puppy to the wetlands and letting her eliminate in there as an alternative to using a doggy-do bag.

My dilemmna: Which is better — eliminating 2-3x a day in a wetlands or using 2-3 plastic bags that will never degrade?

Note: I don’t have a backyard of my own to use — thats the longer term goal (appox 5 years) that will settle this problem organically.

I’m hoping to gather some opinions about this — and asked a few friends for advice as well. What do you think?