Author: Rose Seemann

Rose Seemann is the owner and operator of EnviroWagg, a Colorado company dedicated to collecting and composting canine waste into safe, nutrient-rich garden soil. She is author of The Pet Poo Handbook: How to Recycle and Compost Pet Waste. Rose was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. where she cut her baby teeth on the romance of recycling. Her granddad, a Croatian immigrant who worked long hours at the South Side J&L Steel Works, maintained an urban farm to help feed his family. Leftovers were buried in the gardens, a rotating smorgasbord for bushes, edibles, and flowering plants. Wherever she lived, whatever her circumstances, she followed her granddad's lead and left the soil richer than she found it. "It's always a privilege to give back to the earth."

The Benefits of Bokashi for Pets

Bokashi bran can help dogs, cats, and other animal companions live healthier, chemical-free lives and reduce their carbon paw prints. I would never have discovered bokashi if it weren’t for our tuxedo cat, Max.

We live in a suburban subdivision on what was once high, arid prairie southeast of Denver. For years I’ve successfully composted Max’s used pine pellet (animal bedding) litter along with food scraps in a trench. Composting requires two parts nitrogen/green/food scraps to one part carbon/brown/litter sawdust. I stored the green and the brown outdoors in separate buckets.

While the smell of the litter was easy to contain, stockpiling food scraps in warm weather had a high ick factor. When I opened a “ripe” food bucket, the smell was overwhelming. Plus the rotting green waste attracted flies. And my neighbor’s back door is just yards away.

While searching for natural solutions, I ran across an age-old practice so effective, I can’t believe that I’d passed it by for years just because of its odd-sounding name – bokashi. After throwing together my first batch of bran mix, my storage problems were solved and I was hooked. Thanks, Max!

Fermenting Versus Rotting

Bokashi bran ferments waste instead of letting it rot into putrid blobs. When you cover banana peels, tough asparagus stems and filters full of coffee grounds covered with bran they keep their shapes but morph into “food zombies” – Bizaro Superman images of themselves covered with white fuzzy mold.

Happily, the scraps no longer emit greenhouse gasses, so they no longer stink and attract flies. But they are degraded on the inside and compost in my trench much more quickly. I haven’t had problems with vermin, and I’ve run across reports that waste processed using bokashi bran repels rodents investigating compost piles.

Bokashi is simply pickling – anaerobic digestion on steroids. Cheeses, beer, wine, and sauerkraut are among the many foods that are produced through a similar manipulation of good, aggressive microbes that thrive in airless environments. The process is clean and high speed. The uber-microbes in the mix leave a mildly acidic scent.

Making and using bokashi bran is not complicated and the learning curve is a fairly short one. I’ve included a recipe below for the mix below. You’ll find pages of online posts explaining how bokashi bran can eliminate costly and environmentally unfriendly products, including fertilizers, drain cleaners, and septic sanitizers. But bokashi is especially helpful if you have pets, notably in the areas of odor elimination, probiotics, and diverting the waste they generate from landfills.

Cleaning Around Pets

If you’re using grain, paper, or wood-based litter, sprinkle a palm-full of the fermented grain into the litterbox before adding new litter. Your pet will stir up the bokashi and help activate its odor-fighting properties. The mix will also deodorize the bag or container holding the used litter. Beneficial microbes in bokashi bran don’t just cover odors, they actually suppress microbes that emit foul smells.

A little bokashi bran rubbed into a cat or dog beds will keep it smelling clean. Give your dog a good outdoor brushing while adding a bit of bokashi to freshen his or her coat. The fermented bran won’t hurt pets. It contains microbes that are all found in us and all around us in nature. Sprinkle the bran on the floor before vacuuming to eliminate pet odor on carpeting and in the vacuum bag.

Bokashi bran keeps gerbil, hamster, rabbit, and guinea pig cages fresh and speeds up composting the bedding. Want to perk up your koi? With a little research, you can find out how to clean your pond using straight EM or bokashi mud balls.

Probiotic for Healthy Digestion

We all know how good bacteria help the gut. Many bokashi enthusiasts add fermented bran to their bread and cereal. EM has a long history in animal husbandry. For generations, savvy farmers and ranchers have been helping to boost their livestock’s health by fermenting their feed or adding bokashi grain to their animals’ diets. I haven’t tried this yet with Max simply because I don’t dare ramp up his finicky threshold. But mix a bit with your dog’s favorite menu item, and chances are good that he or she will wolf it down.

If you compost using worms, then it’s not a stretch to say that red wigglers are your pets. Worms love scraps that have been pickled with bokashi and churn out more vermicompost and liquid feed/tea faster than they do with traditional food.

Bokashi Bran Recipe

Start with a mixture consisting of essential microorganisms (EM), a sugar source, grain, and water. You can buy the finished mix online or you make do it yourself. There are many bokashi mix recipes, but here’s a simple one. You can modify these portions to produce smaller or larger quantities.  I make 10 lb. each summer and use it year-round.

To make 10 lbs. of bokashi – thoroughly mix the following:

  • 4 Tbsp. EM-1
  • 4 Tbsp. molasses
  • 10 cups water
  • 10 lbs. bran

You can buy a bottle of EM-1 online, the molasses at the grocery store, and a 40-lb. bag of bran at a local feed supply store. The ingredients are inexpensive considering the bulk supply of bokashi they provide. I started by mixing five pounds of bokashi by hand in a clean cat litter bucket. It was fun! Kids would especially get a kick out of working this spongy material with a muffin dough fragrance. Cats rarely come when called, but Max always shows up when he smells fresh bokashi.

Tie the finished mixture in a tightly closed plastic bag so that it ferments, keep it in a dark lidded container for a month and voila – nice bokashi mix! You can use this freshly fermented bran for the next couple of weeks or air dry it, which will enable you to store it in an air-tight container for many months. To air-dry, simply spread the fresh, sandy-colored mix on a tarp for a few hours until it becomes a dark and grainy to the touch. You’ll want to do this on a warm, windless day.

Turning Pet Waste into Fertilizer

Give EM an airless hang-out and they quickly break down pet waste into carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and fundamental biology – nutrient-dense components that rejuvenate soil. This is why bokashi is a good option for recycling pet waste, even when you don’t have the space or the inclination to compost.

If you want a quick, space-saving, pet waste bokashi system, search online for commercial products that make it easy. Prefab containers with their pre-mixed cultures – usually EM-inoculated bagged grains – are more-or-less pricey, so consider your specific needs and return on investment.

An advantage of commercial kits is that they provide step-by-step instructions that will keep you out of trouble and get the job done. There are product lines that specifically address using bokashi to upcycle pet waste. One company offers a special pet waste accelerant concentrate and another features a mixture called “Dookashi.”

A highly promoted system for odorless fermenting features two stackable, 3 ½- gallon plastic buckets. Simply fill the top bucket with water and deposit pet waste while the full bucket on the bottom completes the cycle. Thirty pounds of dog waste can be finished in a single week. So it would take one average dog more than a month to fill a bucket. The bottom bucket “rests” before it is finished and ready for burial as a fertilizer for ornamental plants.

You can also try do-it-yourself methods that require some time and effort but little investment if you make your own bokashi bran. Here are three approaches that can be used for pet waste or any other organic waste

Bokashi Soup, Stew, or Lasagna

  1. “Bokashi soup”/submerge method (indoors or out):  Fill an airtight container to the half mark with a water containing bokashi mixture. Add waste. Cover and repeat. When the container is almost full, stop adding waste and wait for the degradation to finish. Pour residual fermented waste water – now liquid fertilizer – into a hole or trench, mix with soil, cover with additional soil.
  2. “Bokashi stew”/dry method (indoors or out):  Start with an airtight container. Put a divider in the bottom of the bucket (bokashi using this method doesn’t like to be sitting in its own liquid). Any perforated divider with a few inches of space in the bottom will work. A spigot on the bottom will enable you to drain off the tea (leachate). Add layers of waste covered with bokashi mix. Cover and repeat until full. Stop adding waste and wait for cycle completion. Use finished solid as a fertilizer. Siphon off tea and dilute with water (1:100) to use as a liquid/spray fertilizer.
  3. “Bokashi lasagna”/dry method (outdoors): Place any container with an open bottom on bare ground or make an enclosure on bare ground. Add a layer of waste covered with bokashi mix. Add 2-3 inches of dirt. Repeat until full. Stop adding waste and wait for cycle completion.

Whichever option you try, let the bokashi residue “rest” before using it as fertilizer for new plants. Fresh residue may be too strong to support root development and uptake, although it is useful as a starter for compost piles. Use carnivore waste residue to fertilize only non-edible plants. The material might contain stubborn pathogens that could contaminate fruits, vegetables, and herbs during harvesting.

Cold weather can temporarily stop outdoor bokashi recycling operations. You can ferment indoors – minimum 40° (4° C) optimum 70-100° F (21 and 38° C) – but you will need to eventually work a good bit of the residue into workable soil. So if you want the process to continue in a timely way, prepare a storage system that allows your project to function when temperatures dip.

Working with bokashi bran is like cooking – once you get the basics down, variations are as endless as your imagination. Invest a little time to explore this intriguing portal to pet sustainability.

Related Reading:
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Make Sure Your Garden and Lawn Isn’t Toxic to Your Dog

Spring is the time of year when ingesting the wrong stuff can get dogs into serious trouble, even in their own backyards. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) Animal Poison Control Center reports that its switchboard starts to light up in May when people dig into their yard work and their dogs come along to “help.”

Keeping pets away from commercial weed and bug killers containing toxic chemicals is a no-brainer. And hopefully, none of these are in your landscape maintenance arsenal. But did you know that some seemingly harmless backyard items can be dangerous for dogs? In fact, they can be deadly.

Fertilizers

Dogs walk through plants, collecting product applications on their bodies. When pets come inside, they will try to lick their feet and legs clean, ingesting substances they have picked up.

Lawn fertilizers pose the greatest danger to dogs during and shortly after application. Always read the warning labels and follow application instructions. Most fertilizers recommend that you keep your dog off the grass while you are spreading it and for a specific period of time after application to allow the product to dry.

Keep an eye out for products identified as “weed and feed” – a combination of fertilizers and herbicides – because they contain toxic chemicals. Common herbicides containing 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), 4-chloro-2- methylphenoxypropionic acid (MCPP) and/or dicamba have been linked to canine bladder cancer. If you decide to use “weed and feed” fertilizers, read the instructions carefully and steer pets away from applications as you would from any weed or bug killer.

Commercial fertilizers without herbicides will cause only minor stomach problems if accidentally ingested in small amounts. The big problems start when dogs wolf down fertilizers, even organic brands, from an open bag or dig up or eat large quantities applied to gardens. Newly fertilized earth boxes and plant containers are especially tempting.

Dogs are attracted to the smell of blood meal and bone meal commonly found in fertilizers. Eating these substances can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and might affect the pancreas. Some synthetic products contain a variety of heavy metals such as iron, which may also sicken pets. These inert contents can be left off labels.

Before choosing fertilizers, ask a garden center professional for help finding ones that will not harm animals. Play it safe and store all bagged fertilizers where dogs can’t reach them. Equally important: keep the ingredient list of all outdoor products you are using.

Mulches

Some dogs are attracted to cocoa bean mulch because of the yummy smell. As with chocolate in any form, this mulch often contains theobromine and caffeine, both of which are toxic to dogs. Many mulch producers now cleanse cocoa bean mulches to remove pet toxins. But while mulches containing cocoa are clearly identified on the bag, finding a pet safe brand might not be easy.

Just to be on the safe side, opt for wood mulch with a dog-friendly texture. Eating too much of any wood-based mulch may cause your pet to vomit or have diarrhea. Switching from bark or chips to finely shredded mulch may discourage this habit.

Compost Piles

Composting is an environmentally responsible way to recycle yard and kitchen waste while enriching your soil. But be aware that a compost pile can be a source of pathogens that might seriously harm or kill pets. If your compost contains dairy or food products other than vegetable matter (breads, meats, oils), mold can easily develop.

According to Dr. Camille DeClementi, Senior Toxicologist at the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center, moldy foods may contain tremorgenic mycotoxins, poisons that can cause neurological symptoms. Even small amounts can be toxic within a few hours of ingestion and, depending on the dose, can be fatal.

Clinical signs in dogs include vomiting, tremors, agitation, panting, and increased body temperature. If left untreated, neurological signs can progress to seizures. Immediate treatment involves administering medications to clear out toxins, relax muscles, and cool down temperatures, if necessary.

Keep pets away from compost by securing the area with fencing or covers. Do not compost food products that can become moldy in places accessible to pet or wildlife.

Get Professional Help – Fast!

If your dog is showing symptoms of distress and you suspect toxic ingestion, contact your veterinarian or 24-hour animal urgent care office as soon as possible to report your observations in detail. If you cannot reach a local vet, call ASPCA Animal Poison Control hotline at (888) 426-4435 ($65 fee) or the Pet Poison Hotline at (855)764-7661 ($49 fee). Both are available 24-7.

Let an expert know about the toxic substance you suspect (here’s where that list of product ingredients may be vital). A veterinary professional will provide a treatment plan to get your pet on the road to recovery.

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Do Biodegradable Bags Really Help the Environment?

Bags labeled “biodegradable” and “compostable” are available in 3, 13, and 96-gallon sizes from Amazon, product manufacturers, and your local grocery store. There are small to large compostable bags for everything from kitchen trash to leaf bags, even small pick-up bags to tidy up after your dog. Advertising on the packages claim that these bags degrade like apples or autumn leaves and disintegrate in landfills. But are these claims true? And are you really doing the earth a favor when you spend twice the money for a “green” bag? Well, maybe yes; maybe no.

Undefined Terms – What Is Biodegradable? Or Compostable?

Poly bags touted as “biodegradable” are petro plastic bags contain additives that cause the plastic to become brittle and then break into pieces. When exposed to air and light, these pieces get smaller and smaller until they cannot be seen. Did they biodegrade or is this a case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind? Are the bits becoming plastic dust, waiting for an opportunity to enter the food chain at a microbial level? Frankly, no one has studied the consequences of degraded poly bags and come up with a definitive answer.

The State of California has decided that the term “biodegradable” is essentially meaningless. On October 8, 2012, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that prohibits the sale of plastic bags labeled with the term “’biodegradable,’ ‘degradable,’ or ‘decomposable,’ or any form of those terms.”  Furthermore, “…while scientific technical standards exist to verify that a product is ‘compostable,’ there are no such standards to verify if a product is ‘biodegradable’ because the conditions and timeframe inherent in the claim of ‘biodegradability’ are too vague.”

Compostable bags (American Society for Testing and Materials – ASTM D6400) are primarily made of small amounts of biodegradable polyester resins (made from petroleum products) added to renewable resources such as vegetation starch. It’s complicated, but suffice it to say that a bag made from corn is not all corn or it would not “hold together” as a useful film. Scientists have made a lot of progress developing these “bioglues” – biodegradable plasticizers – that give bioplastics the flexibility, stability and durability of petro plastics.

Low Demand, High Cost

Right now the demand for compostable bags is small; around one percent of plastic bag orders.  Because these bags are niche products, biofilm resins are expensive and bag manufacturing is limited. This drives up the price of compostable bags. Economics 101 and bag manufacturers say that prices will fall as demand increases. But does this mean that we should use more compostable bags to boost production and lower cost? Would this have a positive effect on the environment? Again, it’s complicated.

At this point, the starch component in compostable bags is primarily corn, potatoes, beets, tapioca, or other food crops. Aren’t those things we should be eating…or distilling? Agriculture requires water, fertilizer and fossil fuels for cultivation. Companies are working on ways to manufacture bioplastics using biomass (such as switchgrass and corn stalks), algae, bacteria, and solid waste.  But as with Marty McFly’s hoverboard, we’re not there yet.

“Green” Bags with No Place To Go

The biggest barrier to widespread use of compostable bags is lack of infrastructure for collecting and recycling organic waste. A 2013 study by Columbia University showed that the U.S. generated a total of 389 million tons of municipal solid waste (1.3 short tons per capita). Although food waste and yard trimmings make up 28% of this waste, only 6.3% is composted.

Many communities collect recyclables, including paper, plastic, cans and glass in bins separate from trash receptacles. But very few provide well-promoted organics recycling programs with distinct collection bins and lists of acceptable materials. Unless you do yard composting, you probably rely on an infrastructure that streams organics directly to local landfills.

Compostable bag manufacturers who don’t keep their fingers crossed behind their backs always disclose on the package that the product only fully degrades at a commercial composting facility. If the bag escapes into the natural world, it will trash up the landscape and come apart slowly or very, very slowly depending on climate. In a yard compost pile, it will come apart slowly or very, very slowly depending on climate and your due diligence. In a septic tank or other anaerobic digestor, it will degrade so slowly it will muck up the works. If the bag is sealed in a landfill without water, air, and robust microorganisms, it won’t degrade for centuries. And as it degrades, it will yield methane gas.

Recyclers complain bitterly when compostable bags are mixed with incoming plastic bags. A single compostable bag can contaminate a whole batch of petro plastic material. So if customers are careless with disposal, these bags can cause more trouble than they’re worth, eco-wise.

All of this begs the question: What’s the point of using compostable bags unless the material inside them is headed directly to a commercial composting facility? And the answer, of course, is that there is no point. The best you can do is re-use plastic bags or buy bags made of recycled plastic. Or go a step further and support public policies to develop a community composting infrastructure that will meet the challenge of sustainability.

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Clay-Free Cat Litter for Pet Sustainability

Do our feline companions really have tiny carbon paw prints?

Cats clean themselves and cover their poop. They aren’t fossil-fuel-needy. No gas-guzzling trips to doggie day care or dog parks for them. We seldom buy our cats manufactured collars, leashes, or chew toys.  And just try dressing up your cat in a polyester costume!

The only thing an indoor cat really wants from you is love, attention, and meat. Not as much meat as dogs; nonetheless some eco-system straining meat. No wonder you see so few online posts about greening up cats. By their very nature cats live near zero waste lives. Or do they?

Cats have surpassed dogs as the most popular pets in U.S. households. We host 96 million cats versus 83 million dogs. Cats have fastidious toilet habits, but require a litter box with granular “stuff” to fulfill their missions.  And they need a willing human partner to buy litter, clean the box, and dispose of the waste.  That would be you. And here’s where you can make a real difference in sustainable stewardship.

The average cat produces 1/3 lb. of waste and used litter per day or 120 lb. per year. If you have three cats, that’s 1 lb. per day, 7 lb. per week, or 365 lb. per year. That’s quite a load of ballast in the trash bag.  And that’s not counting deep box cleanings that involve dumping and replacing all of the litter.

Statistically speaking, 96 million U.S. cats generate around 500,000 dump trucks full of waste and used litter a year. Because some cats spend time outdoors, there’s no way to be sure how much kitty fallout is trashed.  Whatever the amount, it’s clear that indoor cats are hardly near-zero-waste pets. Each year millions of tons of feline waste, litter, and plastic collection bags stream into waste management systems.

A smattering of cities, mostly Canadian, accept pet waste, litter, and bedding for composting or biodigestion processing as part of their organics recycling systems. These cities include Calgary and Red Deer, Alberta; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Toronto, Ontario.   While community-wide programs offer the best solution for pet waste sustainability, chances are good that when you dispose of cat waste, the material will simply be hauled to a sealed landfill where it will degrade slowly and emit methane.

Downsides of Clay Litter

It’s easy to see why clumping clay litter is appealing to cat lovers. Cleaning up chunks of compacted clay is easier and more economical than waiting for the clay to reek of urine then dumping the entire litterbox.  To combat odor, manufacturers often add fragrance to litter, although these products are trending to “fragrance free” (baking soda or “natural odor elimination” or “botanical ingredients”).

The downside? Critics say that clumping clay litter is unfriendly to the earth because a major constituent, sodium bentonite, is obtained through strip mining. Sodium bentonite absorbs urine and swells to 15 to 18 times its dry size, so it is often used in sealing and grouting materials.  Non-clumping clay litters often consist of quartz silica, crystalline silica or silica gel, sands which simply absorb moisture. Crystalline silica, or silica dust, is treated as a known carcinogen under California’s Proposition 65. Cats ingest these materials when they lick their paws or breathe litter dust into their lungs. Ingredients are listed on clay litter packaging, but simply ditching clay is easier than deciphering the contents.

Inexpensive Alternative

Our cat Max has been clay-free for five years. When we adopted Max as a kitten, the staff told us that he was healthy but had been treated for a respiratory illness when he entered the shelter.  After we brought him home he seemed fine, but his eyes watered constantly and he had occasional sneezing fits to clear his sinuses.  When we eliminated clay litter, his sneezing stopped and his eyes watered less frequently.

When looking for a clay-free alternative for Max, we considered do-it-yourself natural litters like wood shavings, sand and soy-ink newspaper strips, but they were inconvenient and required frequent changing. We checked out environmentally friendly options on the market, like corn, wheat, wood, and paper-based litters. But for the most part, these products were more expensive than clay.

We finally found a great choice that didn’t break the bank: small animal bedding. You can buy these natural pine pellets in 35 lb. (1 cu. ft.) bags at your local feed store for around $6.00. We mixed the pellets with Max’s clay litter, gradually eliminating the clay. I’m not sure that approach was necessary. He’s a pretty resilient guy and now seems to love the scent when we add fresh pine pellets.

If you decide to try this bedding, examine the bag carefully before purchasing. If you don’t see much sawdust, you’ll know that the plastic bag was properly sealed and kept dry through transport and storage.  Don’t confuse bedding pellets with the bagged pellets used to fuel heaters. Fuel pellets are often smaller and more likely to slip through slotted litter scoopers.  This is a key consideration when cleaning a litterbox with pellets – a process that’s easy but very different from scooping clay litter.

Cleaning a pellet litterbox takes some finesse and requires a deep, extra wide (5 in.) scooper. Here’s how to do it.  Lift out the poop and deposit it into a holding bag or bin.  Then carefully scoop out some of the lightly clumped urine-soaked sawdust dampened pellets.  Shake the scooper back and forth over the holding container.  Tapping the side of the scooper to the side of the litter box will help sift out the loose sawdust more quickly.   You can then recycle the intact pellets left in the scooper by returning them to the litter box. (I’ve posted a link to another cleaning approach for pellets,  the All Pine Self-cleaning Litterbox, at the bottom of this article.)

Pine pellets stay fresh and need little replenishing when used as litter. To enhance the natural freshness, you might want to sprinkle in bokashi mix (EM-impregnated grains used to ferment organics).  I’ve found that using the pellets in combination with bokashi mix and cleaning Max’s litterbox twice a day has eliminated the need for trashing an entire box of used litter.

Choosing any organic-based litter helps to tamp the brakes on clay litter manufacturing, distribution, and sales, but there’s an even better reason for switching litters.  An elegant reason.  A reason guaranteed to generate good eco vibes and keep you from sliding back to clay for the sake of convenience. All you need to do is go one step further. Now that you’re using organic litter, you can recycle the whole enchilada.

Closing the Litter Sustainability Loop

If you own or have access to property with trees, bushes, and other ornamental plants, recycling your cat’s waste and litter will provide them with a nutritious soil amendment. And yes, it is safe to process this material, and send the waste back to nature.

Some cats, particularly outdoor cats that hunt rodents or eat raw foods, can be primary hosts of feline-specific parasites. The most stubborn and dangerous is the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii.  An estimated 11% of Americans have dormant Toxoplasma cysts in their brains and in some countries, the rate is 90%. Healthy immune systems keep the parasite at bay.  But infants, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems who come in direct contact with cat feces can become afflicted with toxoplasmosis, a serious and occasionally fatal disease.

Because there’s always a chance of spreading germs, use due diligence when recycling feline poop. Wash your hands. Keep equipment used to process pet waste separate from equipment used for growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

That said, cat waste mixed with corn, wheat, paper, and wood-based litter can be composted like any other organic material. Follow the instructions available through your local agricultural extension. You may need to add food scraps or other “green” material to the pile to offset the abundant “brown” litter.  But including the litter is a plus because it serves as a carbon bulking agent and the ammonia in the urine will help with degradation.

Your back yard compost pile will probably not heat up to the sustained 122 degrees required to kill carnivore poo pathogens. So let finished cat poo compost lie dormant (“season“) for at least 18 months before using it to enrich soil. Never use it on or near edible gardens because contaminated compost might cling to harvested foods.

Another recycling option is simply burying the waste and litter – either loose or in open paper bags – at least six inches deep in an area that does not drain into waterways. You can plant landscaping over the buried pet waste after letting it degrade for six or more months.  Install new plantings well above buried waste. Raw manure and litter are too strong for direct exposure to young roots. You can also bury waste and litter in very small pockets around mature shrub or tree roots.  The material will degrade and provide nutrients to the soil.

While “flushable” cat litter is available, flushing is not a good disposal option for kittens or cats who might be infected with T. Gondii. This persistent parasite can be fatal to marine mammals.  If you’re not sure if your cat is a T. Gondii carrier, don’t recycle feline waste using do-it-yourself pet waste septic bins or commercial systems such as Dog Dooleys that might drain into watersheds.

Since most infected cats show no symptoms, only a test will reveal contagion. If your cat tests positive for antibodies to T. gondii and you keep the cat indoors afterwards, it’s unlikely that your pet will shed infectious oocysts. Flushing and septic bins are safe options only for cats that are not infected.

You may also want to explore the possibilities of recycling pet waste via vermicompost (worms) or bokashi (fermentation). These are trickier methods that, like composting and burial, require a yard and plants that will benefit from the fertile residue. But if you’re determined, curious, and game for a new adventure, you can find online videos and instructions that will point you in the right direction.

By sending your household’s cat waste back to nature, you’ll shift consumer dollars from clay to organic litter, help divert waste from landfills, improve the soil, and take your cat to near zero waste.

Pet Population

U.S. Humane Society, 96 million cats in the U.S.

Dump truck math / cats

96M cats X .3 = 28,800,000 lbs. per day or 10,368,000,000 lbs. per year or 5,184,000 tons per year or 5.2M tons of cat waste per year 5,200,000 tons divided by 500,000 = 10.4 tons, average dump truck capacity

Community Disposal Systems:
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