Environment: Dog Story

The residents of Rio de Janeiro are enormously fond of their splendid Copacabana beach. So are the 25,000 dogs that live in the area and litter it with some 21 tons of excrement a day. After pondering the complaints of barefoot beach strollers, Copacabana officials offered a solution of sorts: a series of installations named the "Pipi-Dog."

Each one consists of a sand-filled, depressed area with a signpost in the center to serve both as marker and target. On opening day, dog owners and dogs lined up to use the inaugural facility in Serzedelo Corréa Plaza, but the first sampler was a three-year-old boy who wriggled away from his mother and hit the post perfectly. Said his embarrassed mother: "He has always been somewhat mischievous." As for the dogs, most of them went about their business as usual.