This appeared this week on one of Newton’s ever-growing number of village list serves. Bold added for emphasis.

As you may have noticed, the city recently removed the blue trash and green recycling receptacles from all public areas and replaced them with a much smaller number of high-tech trash/recycling units. As a result of this change many public areas are now intentionally without any waste/recycling receptacles. The purpose of this is to save money by reducing staff time spent driving around emptying waste receptacles and to encourage residents to take waste home with them for disposal. It became apparent that public spaces that were used by residents walking their dogs needed to have containers for dog waste if the city expected owners to continue picking up after their dogs. The city has decided that 25-30 areas heavily used by residents walking dogs will have special waste receptacles for dog waste. These containers are not intended for residents to bring pet waste from home. Waste from these receptacles will be disposed of the same as regular trash, so pet waste generated at home or on walks from your home should continue to be disposed of with your regular trash.

There are no pets in my household so this is news to me. Is this really something people do?

UPDATE: Locations of the dog waste bins here.