Tips for Feeding Your Dog Sustainably

Our dogs come with their own carbon pawprint, but it doesn’t have to be a big one. If you want to enjoy having pets and keep them in a way that benefits the planet, being choosy about what they eat can make a big difference. Here are a few tips to help reduce your pet’s impact on the planet.

Eat Lower on the Food Chain

One of the simplest switches you can make to ease your dog’s impact is to have them eat poultry instead of red meat. Poultry is easier on the planet because it takes much less feed and time to harvest a chicken than it does to raise a cow. Another idea is a vegan diet. Recent peer reviewed studies have shown that vegan and plant based diets are healthy for dogs, like they are with people.

If your dog is allergic to chicken they may be able to eat duck, turkey, or small game like rabbit. There are even dog foods made out of crickets.

Don’t forget the health and wellbeing of your pet comes first. If they need to be on a special diet for any reason, you can skip this and help reduce their pawprint elsewhere.

Use leftovers for training treats

If you always seem to find yourself with a leftover chicken breast or a lone hotdog languishing in the fridge, your dog will be happy to help you get rid of that food waste. It’s important for your pet to have balanced nutrition (so these are not meal replacers) but as training treats this can be an excellent way to solve your food waste.

Try local food brands

Your dog’s food has to come from somewhere. If you are importing your food from New Zealand, this food will have a much bigger carbon footprint than the same food from your own country. If you can feed a food your dog likes that is local to your area, you can cut down on a lot of food miles.

You can cut down on your food’s carbon footprint even more if the local food happens to be sustainably raised as well. Not very many pet foods are doing this at the time, but some do offer free-range animals, which are somewhat easier on the environment than grain fed animals.

Measure Your Dog’s Food

You can help keep your pet healthy and reduce their impact on the planet by making sure they are only eating the amount of dog food they need. It’s easy to pour food into a bowl and free feed, or to use the same amount of feed from a lower calorie food when you switch to a higher calorie one.

This can cause weight gain, which is not good for our pets, but is also using food unnecessarily. To help your pet lose weight, check the calories of the food they are getting, and make sure they are getting the appropriate amount for the weight they should be.

What we feed our dogs—and how much—has a big impact on the planet. You can help reduce their impact on the planet by cutting back on what they eat, changing how you feed treats, and eating lower down on the food chain.