PooPrints: Advancing ESG Goals through Responsible Waste Management in Multifamily Communities

PooPrints: Advancing ESG Goals through Responsible Waste Management in Multifamily Communities

In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on incorporating Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles into multifamily operations. As owner/operators strive to create a positive impact on the world, innovative solutions like PooPrints have emerged to address various ESG challenges faced by apartment communities. While PooPrints has been partnering with multifamily for over a decade to tackle dog waste complaints, it is only recently that the technology has become aligned with ESG principles.

PooPrints supports ESG goals through responsible waste management, and its positive implications for the environment and society are many.

Environmental Impact:

PooPrints significantly contributes to environmental sustainability. By accurately identifying pet owners who fail to clean up after their pets, our technology addresses a significant environmental issue. The ability to hold individuals accountable for their actions promotes cleaner and healthier environments, reducing the contamination of water sources and minimizing the spread of diseases associated with pet waste

Social Responsibility:

PooPrints aligns with social responsibility objectives by enhancing the quality of life in communities. The presence of unmanaged pet waste negatively impacts public spaces, posing health risks and diminishing the overall well-being and satisfaction of residents. By implementing PooPrints, operators and municipalities can establish effective waste management programs that foster cleaner and safer neighborhoods. This proactive approach encourages responsible pet ownership, promoting community engagement, strengthening social cohesion, and improving the overall livability of shared spaces.

Governance and Accountability:

PooPrints reinforces effective governance and accountability, which are fundamental principles of ESG, in waste management practices. By implementing a comprehensive and transparent pet waste tracking system, PooPrints enables apartment communities, neighborhoods, parks, and municipalities to enforce policies that promote responsible pet ownership. Through this technology, clear guidelines, codes of conduct, and rules can be established, ensuring that pet owners are accountable for cleaning up after their pets.

The data collected through PooPrints provides valuable insights for decision-making and resource allocation. Operators can analyze patterns and trends related to pet waste to optimize waste management strategies. This data-driven approach enhances governance practices and empowers stakeholders to make informed decisions regarding waste management initiatives.

PooPrints serves as an exceptional example of how a unique technology aligns with ESG principles. By addressing environmental concerns, promoting social responsibility, and enhancing governance practices, PooPrints enables communities to adopt sustainable pet waste management practices. The implementation of this service not only benefits the environment but also improves the overall well-being of society. As organizations increasingly prioritize ESG goals, innovative solutions like PooPrints play a crucial role in creating a more sustainable and responsible future.

The Overlooked Maintenance Problem: Unscooped Pet Waste is Stifling Maintenance Teams Efficiency

The Overlooked Maintenance Problem: Unscooped Pet Waste is Stifling Maintenance Teams Efficiency

Maintenance teams are the very core of every apartment community, keeping operations running smoothly and residents happy. They are responsible for a multitude of day-to-day tasks around apartment communities – they fulfill resident work orders and tend to onsite amenities, like pools and washing machines. But one thing they didn’t sign up to do is pick up unscooped pet waste. 

With a sizable increase in the number of pet owners living in an apartment community, the amount of pet waste found within a community is sure to pile up. Relying on maintenance teams to remedy the problem is no longer a feasible option. In fact, utilizing maintenance teams to pick up waste is most likely costing operators valuable time, equating to a substantial loss in revenue. 

Maintenance professionals worldwide will tell you that there is never a dull moment throughout their work day. From ensuring units are ready for move-in to tending to the countless resident maintenance requests pouring in, they don’t have a moment to spare. Yet, when the need arises to clean the community and pick up unscooped pet waste, they are still the ones called on. However, by doing so, operators are ultimately doing a disservice to the entire community, including themselves and onsite teams.  

While many operators are looking to improve maintenance efficiencies and streamline workflows with mobile maintenance systems, unscooped pet waste remains the hindrance that stifles all these efforts. Maintenance teams can spend an abundance of time, in many cases one to two days per week, picking up pet waste around a community. That inevitably impacts their ability to quickly respond to the wealth of tasks already on their plates – and residents certainly take notice of those delays. 

Operators have tried just about everything in an attempt to dwindle the amount of unscooped pet waste at their communities, but those efforts still seem to come up drastically short of providing a sustainable solution to the challenge. To finally put an end to this seemingly never ending problem, an increasing number of operators are taking a more forward-thinking approach and turning to proactive solutions like enlisting a biotechnology service that performs DNA testing of pet waste. 

More than 7,000 communities spanning the globe have tapped into the holistic approach of biotechnology services and an overwhelming number of them have reported a 95% reduction in the amount of unscooped pet waste at their respective communities. That level of improvement greatly deducts the time that maintenance teams have to spend correcting what’s really the responsibility of the pet owner. 

Ultimately, everything ties back to resident satisfaction. Taking away time from the maintenance team definitely impacts the bottom line. If they can’t turn an apartment quickly enough or get to work orders in a timely manner, resident satisfaction will significantly drop and the domino effect negatively impacts everybody and everything, including NOI.

Community Clean-Up: Enhance Curb Appeal, Increase Asset Value

Community Clean-Up: Enhance Curb Appeal, Increase Asset Value

Maintaining a clean apartment community is a joint effort. Some responsibilities, like trash clean up and various maintenance needs, belong to onsite team members, while other responsibilities fall on the residents’ shoulders –  notably picking up pet waste.

Pet owners are responsible for cleaning up after their pet, but oftentimes that doesn’t happen. According to internal data, 40% of pet owners don’t pick up after their pets. Disposing of pet waste properly is imperative to the well being of an entire community because waste is a dangerous pollutant that’s incredibly harmful to the environment, people and pets. 

Although the health of a community is of the utmost importance, maintaining curb appeal is also crucial. Pristine curb appeal leads to both revenue growth and increased asset value.

With more people opting to live in pet friendly apartment communities and choosing to become pet owners, a larger number of operators are now rethinking outdated pet policies and allowing pets onsite. But with that good news does come one downside – unscooped pet waste throughout the property.

While steps like imposing fines to irresponsible pet owners and providing designated areas with well stocked pet waste stations may encourage owners to pick up after their pets, unscooped waste remains an issue. 

The ultimate goal is not to simply encourage pet owners to be more responsible when it comes to picking up their pets’ waste, it is to eliminate the problem completely. Failure to adequately address pet waste will eventually deter customers from signing a lease and moving in, leading to a reduced NOI.

Allowing pets onsite opens up a broader range of prospective residents and more opportunities to generate ancillary income. But by not fixing the unscooped pet waste nuisance plaguing communities industry wide, those opportunities will be in vain as curb appeal diminishes.

Operators must make greater steps to mitigate unscooped pet waste and prioritize how to best manage the problem with a holistic approach. Policy-based solutions don’t often yield the results operators are looking for as community policies don’t necessarily hold pet owners accountable. In recent years, major benefits have been found by utilizing DNA forensic testing of pet waste left behind and imposing fines on the residents who are leaving unscooped pet waste. 

Operators utilizing a DNA forensic testing solution for pet waste have reported a 95% reduction in unscooped pet waste. These clients, in turn, report increased satisfaction among residents and fewer online complaints. Dog waste can be traced back to the pet owners who are then fined, and less inclined to make the same mistake when there are financial consequences. After all, DNA doesn’t lie. 

In addition to the health and environmental benefits of ensuring pet waste is picked up and providing a proactive approach, biotechnology services drastically improve curb appeal, which is a proven way to boost occupancy. 

With a more aesthetically pleasing property and higher occupancy rates, taking a proactive approach to combating the pet waste problem is invaluable to the bottom line. It not only provides a cleaner, healthier environment to live in, but it attracts long-term residents. Excellent curb appeal adds tremendous value to assets and leads to more satisfied residents who are more likely to stay. Sustaining maximum occupancy, increasing revenue and maximizing asset value are primary goals of any operator. Those objectives can be accomplished while simultaneously keeping residents, their pets and the environment healthy.

Let’s Get Techy

Let's get 
Techy

In an age that is continually seeking the next best, fastest, smartest and most efficient thing, PooPrints is defining what it means to be in the multifamily-specific tech space. 

“The overall trend in multi-family tech is ‘digital transformation,’ meaning the evolution of manual overhead into more efficient operations, elimination of paper, and adoption of frictionless processes,” said Darren Wesemann, EVP, and CIO of Berkadia.  

So, let’s walk through how PooPrints actually embodies these trends.

Evolving Manual Operations

PooPrints now brings the lab straight to the community management team’s fingers through our patented database. The database allows managers to manage their pet population, check results, and execute key operational reports. Our registration process has been completely overhauled to create a more interactive experience for residents while taking excess work off management teams!

Elimination of Paper

We are as green as they get over here! One pillar of our mission statement is to essentially stay eco-friendly and our program works the same way. The new PooPrints registration process and waste collection method eliminate the need for written data, therefore, decreasing our paper trail!

Frictionless Processes

Let’s be honest, science was hard and onsite teams shouldn’t be expected to know all there is about DNA. The PooPrints team is here to ensure that this ageless biotech program is seamlessly implemented and managed on your community. Please reach out to us with any questions, concerns, feedback, or pushback! Your local representative is the best resource for quick and personalized answers. 

While our program as a whole remains the industry standard for DNA Dog Waste Management, PooPrints is still eager to continuously innovate and adapt to better serve our communities. Stay up to date with ongoing changes by joining our communities!

Sources

Multi-Family Tech Trends Shaping the Future. (2019, January 23). Retrieved January 18, 2021, from https://www.cretech.com/cretech-blog/multi-family-tech-trends-shaping-the-future/

Reopening With PooPrints

Reopen with 
PooPrints

This year has truly been one of the hardest for the multifamily industry as well as our nation as a whole. Many projects, celebrations, plans, and trips have been cut or postponed due to the global pandemic. As we near a more stabilized situation and begin to reevaluate those postponed events, make sure you are ready to jump back in!

Here are a couple of quick steps to take when preparing to reopen your community and to continue or even start the PooPrints program.

Dog Registrations

When it comes to PooPrints, dog registrations are everything! Ensuring that every single canine on-site has been registered directly impacts your sample results. 

The easiest way to retrieve an exact list of current dogs that are registered for your community is by selecting “Property Export” in the bottom left of your PooPrints account in the World Pet Registry. From here, select “Export Pet Owner with Pets” and you will receive a downloaded excel file with every registered dog and their owners information. 

START RECONCILING! Use this list and your pet ledger to figure out which dogs who have moved in since January have not been registered. Make sure these dogs get swabbed immediately for best results!

New Staff

In a high turnover industry, it is really important that staff are constantly staying up to date on community programs. If your community has received ANY new staff or undergone any management changes, let us know! Our training team is ready to help new eyes become familiar with PooPrints, the database and how to succeed with our program! Contact us to schedule training or to update any contact/billing information. 

Restock Product

The last thing you need to worry about with reopening is inventory. The worst is when you have scheduled a dog registration/swabbing and have no kits! Make sure this doesn’t happen by checking your current kits and placing appropriate orders with your PooPrints representative. Staying stocked up on kits helps processing and results stay as efficient as possible which means you can recoup costs easier!

Have questions or need clarification on what the next steps look like for your community? 

Let us know! You can call, email or drop us a line and we will help you.

Treat Yo’ Residents

Treat Yo' 
Residents

February is the month of L-O-V-E and as hard as it is to believe, we love our pet owning residents! PooPrints is here for the residents and want to make sure that you know it. Six out of every 10 pet-owning residents ARE responsible and do pick up after their pet and we applaud them! Our goal is to reward those who do their duty as a dog parent and to reshape the behavior of those who fail to do their job as one. That mentality of rewarding responsibility has motivated us to seek and procure partnerships that benefit our residents. So, let’s talk about them a bit. 

Our first partnership is with Orivet Pet Genetics and provides all residents with a free BioPet Life Plan. The Life Plan is a comprehensive life tool for owners to proactively manage their pet’s health directly through their PooPrints Account. Using an interactive and thorough questionnaire, the application is able to help owners forecast possible health issues and provide remedies. Pet owners can also store vaccine/medical records for their dogs and have a calendar to organize upcoming appointments. If owners want to find out even more about their dog they can purchase a breed test or health screening test. Results of these are viewable through their Life Plan and allow data to be even more specific for their dog. It is a great application for owners to be proactive and aware of their pets’ health!

Last year we entered into a partnership with the five-star dog walking service, Rover! Our relationship with Rover is super exciting in that they provide PooPrints residents with a $50 credit for their services. This encompasses dog walking, dog sitting, overnight sitting, drop in visits, and boarding. We understand how busy residents’ lives can get and Rover allows you to care for your pet but still handle all of your to-do’s. With spring time coming fast, this will allow your pet to get outside and be active even when your schedule is super busy. 

And lastly, our most recent partnership is with Chewy! Chewy has quickly established themselves as the premier online pet store, providing pet owners with every product their animal needs for a healthy and happy life. Through the PooPrints program, residents receive a $15 coupon when they spend $50 as a new customer and free shipping with them as well! Chewy offers honestly everything you need for your pet, from food to toys, coats to bowls and leashes, even medicine. It is the one stop show for every pet owner!

What’s truly great about all of these offers, is that residents can access all of them within their account in the DNA World Pet Registry! If residents need any assistance accessing their account or navigating, direct them to our Resident Communication team and they can help! Beyond these fun perks, the PooPrints program does help residents in other ways. It helps pet owners protect their dogs from other dogs’ unscooped waste which can carry harmful bacteria. It also really helps your community dynamic and can relieve any tension built up between residents about dog poop. The blame games and finger pointing are a thing of the past, they can now enjoy their walk with their dog without having to stress about catching a fellow resident for not picking up.  

Howlidays Gift Guide

Howlidays Gift Guide

The howlidays are here and we are finally counting down single digits until the big day! Here at PooPrints, we love all things pets and we love gifts, so we decided to throw together a quick little gift guide to help you spoil all the four legged members and their owners in your family. All gifts will arrive by Christmas if ordered soon. Check them out below!

The Inquisitor

Help a loved one find out all they can about their beloved pet with a complete DNA test. The GENO PET 5.0 is the worlds best DNA test for dogs and allows owners to understand their dog’s breed makeup, possible future health issues, and how to stay proactive with daily habits. You can also view all results through the PooPrints resident portal!

The Fitness Junky

The sporty water bottle is perfect the four legged fitness junkie, the zoomiest dog of them all. It’s attached water cup is the perfect size for any breed and allows you and your dog to stay hydrated during any activity! The bottle is super light so taking it on the go is no issue.

The Coffee Aficionado

You know who the coffee lover in the family is. Chances are, they also are a dog lover and if so, this gift is perfect for them! This cute mug is simple but directly communicates where one’s loyalty lies, to their dog. Pair this with their favorite coffee and you have an easy present checked off. 

The Adventurer

This travel pack is the absolute best gift for those who are always on the go. They love their pet so much that they bring them along, but they don’t have a good way to pack their furry friend’s things.In comes your spot on gift and their troubles are solved! It’s multiple packets, shoulder strap, and lined food carrier makes traveling with your pet a breeze.

The Fashionista

Who’s the glamiest one of them all? This gorgeous collar and leash is best suited for the couturier-minded family member or friend.  This person is the type to not leave the house until their lipstick is perfect and every hair is pinned. Obviously, the same goes for their pet. Help them out the holiday season by gifting a fashion forward yet classy leash set, allowing them to always step out the door with their best paw forward. 

The Top Chef

These adorable paw print and bone molds are the best present for those who love to bake and spoil their pup at the same time. You can purchase a pack of four allowing them to turn out a big batch of custom treats. Molds are oven, dishwasher, freexer and microwave safe. 

Scientific Checks and Balances

Let's Have a Moment of Science

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Let’s talk SCIENCE! You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. We’ve seen more and more comments questioning our scientific processes and how we do the doggie DNA. As a scientific company, we take immense pride in our methods and the success that they’ve brought us and our 4,000 community partners. 

We have developed strict protocols to provide checks and balances for both residents and property managers. These ensure that all PooPrints customers are treated fairly.

We believe residents should have the ability to challenge the credibility of our processes and know their dog’s ‘match’ is truly a ‘match’. Our most used ‘check’ for our program is a DNA Verification Swab. Yes — it’s true that you can’t argue with DNA, but you can verify it. 

A verification swab gives residents the ability to know with full confidence that their dog is responsible for a match sample. If a resident ever feels that there is no way that their dog could be responsible or that there was confusion with the DNA swab, they can request a verification swab through their property. The resident should then reswab their dog in the presence of community management. We will process that swab to compare it to the original swab on file as well as the waste sample. 

laboratory scientist dog pooprints

DNA verification swabs are also widely used by property managers. As more and more communities are implementing  PooPrints, more and more residents are being registered. This creates situations where residents and their pets transfer between PooPrints communities. As an extra measure, the community accepting the pet will usually have the resident do a DNA verification test to ensure that the dog moving to the community is the same dog that was previously registered with PooPrints.

Another hot topic is the contamination question. What happens if a dog poops on top of another dog’s poop? What happens if there’s urine?

We understand that community size and pet populations can differ from property to property — meaning some communities have smaller areas for dogs but more dogs in them. In the rare event that two dogs go to the bathroom in the exact same spot and the samples are somehow smooshed together and collected, that sample will NOT yield a result.

If our lab detects more than one strand of DNA in a sample, it is automatically ‘failed’. We are not here to determine which resident’s dog pooped more or how to report that, so we don’t even mess with that. 

The cross contamination conversation usually brings up the question of urine, too. We use epithelial cells from waste to extract the DNA for analysis. FUN FACT: A healthy dog’s urine should not have any epithelial cells in it, which means no DNA for us to test. In the event a dog is not healthy and there are epithelial cells present, the sample will still fail since there are two different strands of DNA. Bottom line — we’ve got you covered, we won’t be reporting any possibly-contaminated samples.

And for our grand finale, we have our proprietary stabilizing solution. Our solution in each waste kit locks in the integrity of the sample, meaning it preserves the DNA for an extended amount of time. This alleviates any stress on property managers to rush samples back into and they don’t have to worry about a kit expiring. This also eliminates any worry from a resident that a sample could be compromised due to age. 

PooPrints dog poop DNA waste collection process

We totally know that the questions will still be asked and the “ponzi-scheme” name calling will still happen but, we hope some of this extra info helps you better understand the program. We are very proud of our program and while we will always have critics, you can rest assured knowing it is backed by pretty tough science. 

Some quick facts about our lab to close this thing out:

  • Our lab is the only accredited dog feces testing lab in the WORLD
  • Our lab is accredited by the International Organization of Standardization under ISO 17025 2005 
  • All of our staff has obtained at least a Bachelors of Science and completed our rigorous training 
  • Have any questions or need some clarification?  Call, email, or chat with us
 
Have any questions or need some clarification?  Call, email, or chat with us

Poop Rules…no like actual rules.

PooPrints dog poop DNA waste collection process
PooPrints dog poop DNA waste collection process

Poop rules...no like actual rules.

Property managers: Do you know what your results mean? Results are obviously very important — they’re how we get matches — but what about the other outcomes? We’re defining what separates each of these result categories and how to tackle them to ultimately get more matches!

The first result type — which hopefully we all know well — is a Match. Quick recap! A Match means that the DNA in the waste sample matches the DNA of a dog you have registered on your property. If you need help navigating to find Matches and see the info with them, let us know. We offer weekly trainings on the DNA World Pet Registry!

Another result option is a No Match. Like Matches, these do have a solid, complete genetic profile but that DNA does not match up to any of the dogs actually registered on your community. What this usually boils down to is an unauthorized/hidden pet or a guest pet. While this sounds like the end of the road, it’s not. Behind the curtain of our program, we have built in a few checks-and-balances to help you combat these. 

First and foremost – check the collection notes that are tied to each sample. Every waste sample collection kit has all the necessary tools to scoop that poop but, it also has a card with an area to detail date, time, and location of the collection. Secondly, in our database, we have stored the DNA of these No Matches and can see how many waste samples belong to one pet. Last but not least, our lab reruns No Matches against the database twice a month, in case you’ve gotten any dogs registered that were once unaccounted for.

Put all of these little bits together in a scenario: Say we have two or three No Matches and from the collection notes, you can see that they were all found around Building 5. On our lab’s end, we can see that all the DNA in these No-Match samples belong to the same dog. Sowe know, only 1 dog is responsible, we just don’t know which dog. Intuitively, your community can do a building check and get that hidden dog registered so those No Matches flip to Matches. Then, you get to fine that resident and recoup your costs! 

While No Matches can be frustrating, don’t get discouraged! These ALWAYS have the opportunity to flip so you can recoup your costs. Reach out to us and we can provide you with a No Match report to help you nail down who the culprit may be.

Now, on to Fails. These are almost entirely based off of collection method. There are a few things that when collecting can result in a Fail:

  • Too little or too much of a sample. Yes, you can really give us too much poo. You only want to fill the bottle up about half-way or a nickel sized slice. Each of our collection bottles are filled with a small amount of our stabilizing solution. If you get too much poo in the bottle, there’s not enough solution to counteract that pesky bacteria on the sample. Too much bacteria means it will degrade the DNA in transit, and we’ll get a failed sample. So, be sure you only send us a bit! 
  • The sample was cross contaminated. This means the lab has detected two different canine DNA in the sample. These samples automatically fail, as we do not want to get in the business of determining which resident’s dog had more DNA and who pays what. Cross contamination is rare, but technically it could happen!
  • The integrity of the sample has been damaged which in turn damages the DNA. This can happen if a sample has been heavily disturbed by outside forces (foot traffic) or if was first stored in plastic before sampling. If a sample is in a plastic bag (like a poo bag), you’re increasing your chances of getting a fail. Not only will bacteria grow inside the plastic and destroy the DNA, but once it’s been highly disturbed (i.e. picking it up into the bag and probably smooshing it a little) chances are that many of the epithelial cells on the outside of the sample will be damaged or gone entirely.

Did you ever know there were so many rules about poo? Knowing the difference between your results is very important in the management of our program. If you’ve read this and you’re even more confused, reach out to us! We are more than happy to help you navigate our system or provide additional material on collection. 

Importance of Pet Ownership

apartment family with happy dog
The  
Importance 
of Pet Ownership

It’s no that pets play a huge role in our day-to-day lives. Besides the value of service animals like seeing-eye-dogs and other support animals that are trained to perform a tasks, pets also offer companionship and comfort. There are many studies on the effect of pet ownership, some even linking it to improved overall heart health.

Many people have felt, and continue to desire, the emotional and health benefits that these pets bring to their lives. While majority of pet owning residents find these benefits through small dogs and cats, some own fish, birds, and hedgehogs. This variety in pets is what contributes to the large economic presence this demographic has. In 2018 pet owners spent over $72 Billion on food, supplies, veterinary care, and purchasing of animals. In 2019 this number is estimated to be closer to $75 Billion!

In a 2014 survey, 72% of renters said they were pet owners. This draws the conclusion that almost three quarters of your renters draw some sort of relationship and comfort from animals within home which is now your community. With so many pet owning residents in the industry, catering to that demographic is more important than ever before. The PooPrints program is a beneficial way to do just that.

Our program not only ensures that your property value is upheld and that your pet owners are responsible but, it also serves those residents as well. We offer multiple perks like a $50 Rover.com credit, access to the BioPet LifePlan which is a comprehensive life tool for pet health data, and a coupon with Chewy.com! A clean and safe environment is what all fur parents want for their animals and our program gives them that peace of mind. Show your pet owning resident and all renters that you care about the wellness of their animal with the PooPrints program as an amenity!