dog poop and ileostomy bags: a conundrum

I’ll let you in on a secret: I don’t always pick up my dog’s poop.
I’m not the person leaving my pet’s giant turd in the middle of the sidewalk, or on your front lawn. In the woods, however, as long as the deed is done off the trail, I leave it alone. My excuse for this behaviour is the environment: the forest is full of scat of various kinds, and the volume of plastic required to pick up every doo-doo would be extensive. My dog produces 2-3 stools per day, which would add up to 730-1095 plastic bags going to landfill annually, to break down over forty years or however long it takes. In the woods, the organic matter is gone with the next rainfall. I was pretty satisfied with my plastic reduction strategy, until I got an ileostomy.

For the uninitiated, an ileostomy is a way for the small bowel to empty through an opening in the skin (as opposed to a colostomy, which is the same thing with the large bowel). I had surgery to remove my rectal cancer, and they were able to reattach the bowel to the rectum, but I needed to give the area a chance to rest and heal. So, now I have the temporary ileostomy which drains into—you guessed it—a plastic bag on the outside of my abdomen. To avoid odour, I need to change the bag every couple of days, and although it’s possible to rinse the bags out and reuse, there’s a bit of an ick factor there. When it’s time to change the two-piece flange (the part stuck to my skin) and bag, the entire thing goes into yet another plastic bag for the garbage. I wear medical gloves to do these changes (more plastic, or at least polymers), since I’m not too skilled yet and otherwise end up with poop on my hands.
 
I’m aware of the irony here: the person trying to reduce plastic use, now relying on plastic every day. There really aren’t any other “environmentally friendly” options for an ileostomate. Some colostomy users are able to control their stool output by flushing the stoma intermittently during the day, but small bowel output is much more constant, and higher volume.
 
The dilemma reminds me of the disposable-versus-cloth diaper decisions I had to make when the kids were small. The message: disposable diapers are bad! They take hundreds of years to break down! I made the effort to use bulky, inconvenient cloth diapers and realized quickly that trying to wash and dry them was using hot water, chemicals, electricity, and a lot of time. I compromised by using one cloth diaper per day…for a while.
 
Have you ever felt thwarted in your efforts to do something for the environment? I’m thinking about the time we cleaned up garbage at the side of the highway, only to have someone drive by and fling a coffee cup out their window. I’m thinking of the vegetable garden I attempted in our backyard, which failed completely due to excessive shade (runty, cork-sized carrots, a green pepper the size of my thumbnail). I’m thinking of that time I rode my bike to work and it was stolen even though I could see it from the window.
 
At this point, I don’t think anyone will begrudge my newly increased plastic use. I’m not giving up on environmental causes, but I’m also embracing Kant: “the only thing that is good without qualification is the good will.”
Seriously, I’m trying.