Rabbits as the more sustainable house pet

Bunelope and Ukku, best friends after a day of hard work shredding cardboard.

Rabbits are becoming more and more popular as house pets these days. Still, not very many people are familiar with them as pets and prefer the more traditional cat or dog. Of the many reasons people give for having rabbits as house pets, the environment is not typically one of them. Sure, they are adorable and soft, intelligent, playful, relatively odorless, easily litter box trained and highly social animals with loads of personality (or rather rabbitality), but they're also more sustainable than cats or dogs. Don't get me wrong, I love cats and dogs but did you know that the chicken and grains that their food is made from leave rather large footprints on this planet. In fact, by some accounts your medium size dog has a larger ecological footprint than your SUV, your cat, a footprint about the size of a VW Golf.

As an alternative you might try rabbits, but before you go ahead with that option, do your homework. I know from personal experience that rabbits are a lot of work, especially when you've never had them before and are unfamiliar with their "language". Their natural behaviors are very different from cats and dogs because they are prey animals. They also like to chew anything in their path or in their way- wires, clothing, books, mail... That said, once you learn to live with them and adapt your home environment to their mischievous ways, they are delightful companions with far more intelligence than they are usually credited with. But what makes them more sustainable you ask? Here's what:

1. They are vegetarian which means their food wasn't raised on a CAFO.
2. They eat low on the food chain- grass mostly. This means not as many resources like water and fossil fuels went into growing their food as raising your cat or your dog's food.
3. They don't eat grains or meat, which means no corn or corn-fed animals went into your bunny's diet. (OK so they actually love to eat grains but it's really not good for their tummies!)
4. They eat your veggie scraps, cutting down on your trash output.
5. They are natural composters. This is no joke! They take grass and turn it into dry little pellets that do great good for your garden or composting bin. A plus side is that their poops don't stink and they have superb personal hygiene.
6. They're small so they don't eat or drink much or take up much space. Note that rabbits should spend as much time as possible outside of a cage or penned area. A hutch rabbit is a bored, sad, and lonely rabbit.
7. They won't kill the wildlife (every year cats kill billions of wild animals).


Now if you already have a cat or dog and are thinking to yourself, "I don't care what he says, I'll never get a stupid rabbit!", you're in luck because there are ways to make owning a dog or cat more sustainable, like making your own dog food with organic, sustainably grown grains and organic pastured beef and chicken.