The Scoop on Cat Litter

Hey Mr. Green,
What is the greenest kitty litter for my indoor cat? --Carol (submitted via e-mail)

Cats themselves are a much bigger environmental menace than kitty litter. They're an invasive species that kills hundreds of millions of birds and mammals each year, robbing food from native predators like hawks and owls. So I salute you for keeping your feline where it belongs: inside.

The greenest cat litter is made of recycled paper, followed by sawdust, wheat chaff, oat hulls, or other biological materials. But more than half the litter in the United States is made of bentonite--a stripmined clay that leads right to Dick Cheney, which may explain why he raked around in Iraq like it was his personal litter box. Halliburton, where Cheney was CEO, produces about one-sixth of the 3 million tons of bentonite sold each year, of which 1.7 million tons go into cat litter. Quite a waste of a substance that can be used in iron smelting, environmental cleanup, and wine clarifying.

Neither bentonite nor silica gel litter should be flushed en masse, as they can gum up plumbing, but flushing a few particles probably won't cause trouble. Most municipal sewage systems can handle pet waste, but it should not be flushed where sea otters live, since studies have found some of these animals to be infected with toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease carried in cat feces. Because this parasite can severely harm human embryos, pregnant women should avoid handling cat waste.

Comments

[Eloise Carson]

I understand that cats are an invasive species on one level, but I am tired of dogs and cats being picked on as bad for the environment when no one is really talking about the biggest invasive species, humans. I disagree that cats should be forced to be inside because they kill birds. Cats want to go outside. How would you like to live inside your entire life? We humans kill so many more birds and other animals by destroying their habitat that to say we're going to keep cats indoors to save birds seems rather not to the point. Why punish the cats, when we really need to start talking about population growth?

[Ric Deschler]

Mr. Green you are dead wrong about "Most municipal sewage systems can handle pet waste." All sewage systems are overtaxed trying to perform the work they were designed to perform. Even brand new, state of the art systems are overtaxed when people like you use them to dispose of anything except sewage. You don't flush cat litter, medicines, or any other stuff down the toilet that should be disposed of properly somewhere else. This is not just a green issue, it is a basic common sense issue.