Dogsey

In many cities around the world stray dogs are part of city life. One such city is Istanbul, where 150 thousand stray dogs and cats share the streets with 14 million human inhabitants. A clever device by the Turkish company Pugedon aims to increase recycling while providing food and water to stray dogs and waking up our kindness and humanity.

As Istanbul-based animal rights lawyer Ahmet Senpolat says,

People often buy the puppies from pet stores, and abandon them when they become too tough to handle.

Until we are ready to address and fix the core of the problem we’ll have to accept that stray dogs have become urban dogs and co-inhabitants of our cities. They have learned to survive in a completely different ecosystem – one with traffic lights, humans, and trash bins that provide food. Still, food is often a problem and dogs often rely on the kindness of strangers to be fed.

It is this same kindness that Turkish company Pugedon aims to tap into with its street recycle-bin-kibble-dispenser. The device encourages passersby to recycle and look at our animal co-inhabitants with different eyes. The principle of the machine is very simple – it has containers for water (you can pour the remaining water from your bottle before recycling it) and for dog food. A fixed ratio of kibbles is dispensed when a bottle is recycled. The project is independent from the government and covers the cost of the food with the recycled bottles.