The London Borough of Camden has a new weapon in its eternal fight against dog poo: pink spray paint. The idea is to embarrass dog owners who fail to pick up after their animals—and they’ve offered cans of paint to local residents who wish to participate in the program.
The mess will not be subsequently cleaned up, officials say, to ensure that the highlighted excrement remains as much a public eyesore as possible.
“It’s about embarrassing the people who aren’t picking up the poo after their dogs,” Camden’s cabinet member for the environment, Sally Gimson, told the Evening Standard. “The whole point is really to embarrass dog owners who are doing it to say ‘we have noticed you’ve done it and you shouldn’t be doing it’.”
According to Childrens’ BBC, Staffordshire council tried the same trick in 2010, as did a community group in Warminster and at least one other city. West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, is also painting poo pink.
Note: if your poo is pink, lay off the pepto-bismol cocktails.