Is having pets a conflict with being sustainable?

Having pets can sometimes seem like a conflict for my other sustainability focused lifestyle choices. I eat mostly vegetarian, but I wouldn’t even consider depriving my cats of meat. I don’t use plastic bags, except to pick up my dog’s poop.

But the consequences of pets can go a lot further than just their food and poop bags. Pet cats are responsible for billions of lizard, mammal, and bird deaths annually in the US and more than a quarter million in the UK. These are largely direct kills. But there are also issues with disease. Cats in particular , are the most abundant host of a parasite that can infect many animals including sea mammals. Even just flushing a bird from its nest can result in the death of all of the chicks.

Let’s go back to their food for a minute. Pet cats and dogs in the US consume as much energy from food as 62 million Americans. And produce 30% as much fecal matter.

So maybe cats and dogs are bad but other pets are good? Many other pets are part of the exotic animal trade which leads to illegal trade. Not to mention the havoc some of these animals can wreak if they escape or are released into the wild.

On the upside there are easy solutions. Keep cats indoors. If they do go outside, make sure they are always supervised and contained either in an enclosed space or on a harness. Keep your dogs under control and don’t let them run through brush, especially during nesting season. And for any time of pet, make sure you are prepared for the commitment involved and that you get it from a reputable source.

The above information was written based on Marra (2019).