Authorities in Catania, Italy, recently shared footage captured by CCTV cameras in the municipality showing a dog carrying what look like plastic trash bags in its mouth and dumping them on the side of the road before returning from where it came. Police have since identified the animal and fined its master for using it to dump trash illegally.
“Inventiveness… can never be an alibi for incivility,” Italian authorities wrote in a Facebook post. “The environmental unit of Catania’s municipal police has released two videos recorded by surveillance cameras in which a dog is seen depositing a bag of waste in the street.”
This behavior is both cunning and doubly unfair, because in addition to littering the city, it attempts to evade the rules by exploiting the unwitting four-legged friend. Respect for urban decorum and the environment is everyone’s duty,” the post added.
After analyzing the CCTV footage, Catania authorities became convinced that the dog had been trained by its owner to dump the trash illegally so that they wouldn’t be caught on camera doing it. They have reportedly already fined the animal’s owner, although it’s unclear how they managed to prove that the dog had been trained to litter.
Under Italian law, individuals caught dumping garbage illegally can be fined from 1,500 euros ($1,770) to 18,000 euros ($21,220), but it doesn’t say anything about dogs…
