New Hope For Berlin

For a long time, I've said that if a use could be found for this city's most abundant organic product, the economy here could turn around. Well, according to this article, San Francisco is hoping to turn its dog poop into energy.

Actually, it's not all that surprising. I just did an article for the forthcoming issue of Invest In Germany magazine (stop giggling: I have to feed myself and pay the rent) about this company, which is doing a similar thing with the byproducts of sewage treatment plants in a pilot project in Germany.

Unfortunately, as you can read, the San Francisco project is dependent upon pet owners cleaning up after their dogs. This little bit of civility has yet to occur here, although dispensers of little plastic bags can be found in some parks. They don't last long, though; they're routinely vandalized and the baggies strewn around the park.

Still, Paris and some other places have those motorcycle-like vaccum cleaner machines, and if the city can scrape together enough credit for a small fleet of those (unlikely, I admit, in the present fiscal crisis), maybe Berlin can attack its energy crisis and its unemployment crisis at the very same time.

Naaah. Never happen.