Trying to shop more sustainably for a dog can feel like walking into a wall of green labels, each one promising to save a slightly different corner of the planet. Most of the advice is vague, some of it is marketing, and a fair amount of it is flatly wrong. The useful version is narrower than it sounds: a handful of swaps genuinely move the needle, and one product almost everyone buys with good intentions is doing less than they think.
We asked Dave Coast, the Los Angeles wellness figure behind The Healthy Camper and his Instagram series on climate, to walk through the choices he actually makes for his Poodle. What follows is his short list, plus the reasoning that makes each one worth it.
Start with the poop bag, because the “compostable” one is a trap
This is the swap people get backwards. Faced with a shelf of “compostable” bags and a shelf of recycled-plastic ones, the instinct is to grab the compostable option and feel good about it. Coast argues the opposite, and the logic holds up.
Most bags labeled compostable only break down in an industrial composting facility, not your backyard bin, and those facilities are not available in most places. Even where one exists, the vast majority will not accept pet waste, because dog feces can carry bacteria and parasites that municipal composting isn’t set up to handle. So the “compostable” bag usually ends up in the same landfill as everything else, where, starved of oxygen, it does not meaningfully break down anyway. On top of that, a compostable bag is made from newly produced material. A recycled-plastic bag reuses something already headed for the trash, and the recycled versions tend to be thicker and less prone to the mid-walk failure every dog owner has experienced at least once.
If you want to go further than plastic altogether, Coast points to recycled-paper waste sheets as a more hardcore option, though it’s a bigger behavior change than most people will stick with.
Cricket-protein treats, if your dog can handle novel proteins
Insect protein sounds like a stunt until you look at the inputs. Crickets are among the most resource-efficient protein sources on the planet, requiring a fraction of the land, water, and feed that beef does, and they’re naturally high in omega-3 fatty acids. Coast notes a bonus for allergy-prone dogs: food allergies in dogs are usually a reaction to specific proteins rather than to grain, so a genuinely novel protein like cricket can sidestep the usual triggers. Introduce it slowly, the way you would any new food, and watch for digestive upset.
A bed built from recycled materials
For the dog’s actual furniture, Coast likes Greener Pup, whose beds are made from recycled materials and are hypoallergenic and machine-washable. Washable matters more than it seems for sustainability: a bed you can throw in the laundry is a bed you replace far less often, and the longest-lasting product is almost always the greener one.
A shampoo where the sustainability is baked into the formula
Coast’s grooming pick is Earthbath, whose products are cruelty-free, made in the U.S., and free of artificial fragrance, parabens, sulfates, and phosphates. The quieter sustainability story is concentration: the formulas are highly concentrated, so each bottle uses less water and less packaging per wash, and a small amount stretches across many baths. The company also flags efforts across sourcing and shipping to trim its footprint. You can find Earthbath’s oatmeal and aloe shampoo on Amazon.
A collar and leash made from something that rarely gets recycled
Bicycle inner tubes are a recycling dead end. They’re rubber, they’re everywhere, and almost no municipal program takes them. A few makers now weave them into collars and leashes, giving the webbing a waterproof, odor-resistant second life instead of a spot in the landfill. It’s the kind of swap that costs you nothing in daily use and quietly keeps a hard-to-recycle material in circulation.
What’s new since this list first ran
The eco-dog category has grown up in the last couple of years, and the useful development for shoppers is regulatory rather than product-driven. “Compostable” and “biodegradable” claims on pet products have drawn sharper scrutiny from consumer-protection regulators, who have pushed back on bags marketed as compostable when they only break down under industrial conditions most buyers can’t access. The practical takeaway matches Coast’s instinct: read past the leaf on the label and check what the material actually requires to break down, and where it will really end up. When in doubt, the recycled-content option you’ll reuse and keep is usually the more honest green choice than a single-use item labeled compostable.
