A welcome scoop for dog owners
Coming to pet shops in 2012: An Israeli pooper-scooper that turns droppings into harmless, odorless ash within seconds.
If you have a dog, then you know that no matter how fancy a pooper-scooper you’ve got, after Rover’s walk you are still left with a messy, smelly nuisance that pollutes the environment with sewage and plastic bags.
One Israeli who got fined for failing to pick up the droppings decided to contact Prof. Oded Shoseyov of the Hebrew University, a renowned biotech inventor, for a better solution. And Shoseyov rose to the challenge.
His novel idea is AshPoopie, a pooper-scooper with a critical difference: After it gathers the droppings, it turns them into odorless, sterile ash within seconds. All the dog-walker has to do is push a button to release an activation capsule from the cartridge inside the unit.
Recently, AshPoopie earned patents in Europe and the United States. Ramat Gan-based Paulee CleanTec, the company founded to develop this and related products, is working with engineers to finalize the design ahead of a 2012 US launch.
Apparently, American retailers can’t wait to start stocking the product. “Where have you been all this time?” was the reaction most often heard by executives of the privately funded company when they introduced AshPoopie in September at SuperZoo 2011, the major US pet products exhibition in Las Vegas.