Isn't there trash cans all over the streets of Paris?
Trash bags actually. They removed the cans because they were apparently a great place for terrorists to hide bombs. Not sure when the change-over started but by the time we arrived about a decade ago there were no cans to be seen.
Anyway, yes, they are there. All over the place in public parks and such. But having and using are sometimes a goodly distance apart. I think it's like the lady said, picking up a handful of steaming dog poop is unpleasant and Parisians tend to have a very highly developed sense of what they do and do not want to do.
To be fair probably half of the dog owners
do pick up but for the rest of them ... not a chance! Given that there's an estimated 11 Million pets in Paris, say half of them dogs, and half of those (one guesstimates) pooping when and where they please that still leaves you with well over two million little doggy bung-holes busy at work on the city streets more or less every single day of the year. Isn't that a pleasant image?
And all of that says nothing of the rivers of urine that streak the sidewalks from one end of the city to the other, no one bats an eyelash at those. It seems to be an unwritten rule here that once a dog hits the street he is master of his domain: they're permitted to wee on anything they please whether it be cars, bikes, people's luggage, curbside trash, storefronts, welcome mats, open car doors, electrical and telephone boxes, city maintenance equipment, whatever! It's all fair game. We tend to make a point of stepping over the little golden rivers and the looks we get sometimes makes it pretty clear that what we see and what the Parisians see are not the same thing.
There are good reasons why Paris is sometimes called "the world's biggest outdoor toilet".