Monaco to hand out free bottles for dog owners to rinse pavements
By Zak Jackson, MonacoViews Editorial
The Société Monégasque d'Assainissement will distribute free water bottles from late October to encourage dog owners to rinse pavements after their pets urinate.
From late October, the Société Monégasque d'Assainissement (SMA) will begin handing out free water bottles to dog owners across the Principality, part of a push to keep pavements and public spaces cleaner. The scheme targets a familiar complaint in a city with one of the highest densities of dog ownership in Europe: urine stains and odours on the pedestrian zones around Port Hercule, the Condamine market area and residential streets in Monte-Carlo.
The idea is simple. Owners carry the small bottles on walks and use them to rinse the pavement after their dog urinates, reducing residue before it sets into the stone. SMA staff are expected to distribute the bottles at points around the Principality, with further details on collection locations to follow as the initiative rolls out.
For residents, it is a low-cost, practical response to a problem that has long been a point of friction between dog owners and neighbours in Monaco's dense urban layout, where pavements see heavy foot traffic and little room for grass verges. Whether uptake proves high will depend on how visibly SMA promotes the scheme and how easy the bottles are to obtain in the coming weeks.