ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

A Spanish town has come up with an ingenious way to keep its streets clean of dog mess - by sending the offending deposits back to the owners in an official box marked 'Lost Property'.

The council of Brunete, a small town near Madrid, launched the campaign to crack down on irresponsible dog owners.

During the course of a week a team of 20 volunteers patrolled the town's streets on the lookout for dog owners who failed to scoop. They then approached the guilty owner and struck up a casual conversation to discover the name of the dog.

"With the name of the dog and the breed it was possible to identify the owner from the registered pet database held in the town hall," explained a spokesman from the council.

The volunteers then scooped up the excrement and packaged it in a box branded with town hall insignia and marked 'Lost Property' and delivered by courier to the pet owner's home.

The campaign, developed by advertising agency McCann,won the 'Sol de Plata' award at the recent Ibero-American Advertising Festival.

In all 147 'express poop' deliveries were made during the course of the week in February and the town with 10,000 residents has since reported a 70 per cent drop in the amount of dog mess found in its streets.