No matter how “green” you think you and your dog are, a British Border Collie is probably putting your eco-friendly practices to shame.
Border Collie Starts Bottle Collection
Scruff is a 13-year-old canine who lives in Nuneaton, a town in central England. His parents, Yvonne Faulkner-Grant and David Grant, often indulge the pup with off-leash walks (which Scruff can do safely thanks to extensive training).
Scruff is one lucky pup; he gets two walks a day. The first is in the morning, and lasts three to four miles; the second is in the evening and is about a mile. But rather than just wander or chase squirrels or sniff around for other dogs, Scruff picks up plastic bottles.
“This is a focus, a job for him,” Faulkner-Grant told Today.
“He is a Border Collie, so he loves to retrieve and collect different things and stuff like that,” Grant said.
When Scruff started his DIY cleanup project, his parents let him play with the bottles but didn’t pick them up. Eventually, they decided to start collecting the bottles to dispose of properly, because “there is a hell of a lot” of garbage on their route.
“We felt guilty leaving them on the floor,” Grant said. “People might think that we’d dropped them ourselves.”
Inspiring Others on Social Media
Amazed at the quantity of plastic the Border Collie was collecting, Grant began reporting on his pooch’s monthly hauls on a Facebook page with the hashtag #scruffsbottlepatrol. The proud dog parents have continued sharing Scruff’s mission with photos of the bottles he picks up – but the bottles don’t count unless the pup personally grabs them.
“We made the rule that he has to pick them up, otherwise it’s not really Scruff’s bottle patrol,” Grant said. “We were just so curious (to see) how many he could collect.”
Scruff’s parents estimate that he has amassed an impressive 1,000 bottles. They’re currently stored in the family’s backyard and will be tallied at the end of the year.
“Hopefully it sends a good message out to other people around the world to just pick (litter) up and not leave it to animals to do it,” Grant told Today. “We wouldn’t be doing this if people did pick the litter up in the first place. So you know, we’ve all got to save the planet and look after it somehow.”
