Cat litter - destroying the Wyoming landscape
In my quest to evaluate our household purchases from an environmental standpoint, I recently took a look at our clay-based cat litter. Since the litter's ingredients weren't listed on the box, I had to do a little digging to find them online: limestone, bentonite, water, guar gum, fragrance, sodium bicarbonate, and sodium hypochlorite.
- First of all: there is fragrance in my "unscented" cat litter? Fragrance is really just a catch-all phrase that can include pretty much anything. More info on "fragrance".
- Moving onto bentonite: This provides the clumping action but requires strip mining to be collected. Stanford has a summary of its overall environmental impact. Since most of the bentonite in the world is found in Wyoming, and demand for clumping clay cat litter keeps this industry afloat, my purchase of clumping clay litter was furthering the destruction of the Wyoming landscape.
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Most cat owners will understand the struggle associated with finding a good litter. You want something that's easy to clean, isn't too dusty, takes care of the smell, doesn't track all over the house, doesn't cost an insane amount of money, etc. Learning all about clay litter was quite the disappointment because it meant that our search for a tolerable cat litter had to start all over again. So where to go from here? There are many alternatives - Corn, wheat, wood, paper, etc. Once I started looking, I saw at least one option available in local stores. For those who prefer online shopping, chewy.com has been quite helpful because it allows you to filter litter results by substrate. Here's a summary of four star brands currently offered on their website as of March 2018:
- Corn: Arm & Hammer, Garfield, Tidy Cats, World's Best
- Grass: Frisco, Smart Cat
- Paper: Fresh News, Hartz, Purina Yesterday's News
- Walnut: Naturally Fresh
- Wood: Arm & Hammer, Cypress Fresh, Nex Gen, Okocat, Tidy Cats, Weruva
- Wheat: Swheat Scoop
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Update:
After months of trials, my family has settled on Okocat. Their wood-based products are made from fallen timber / unused lumber. They work great and come in compostable packaging.
Unexpected bonus? All of the alternative substrates are lighter than clay, so carrying used product out to our condo's dumpster is significantly easier on my shoulder (yes, mom...still having shoulder problems - mostly because I haven't done any of what you recommended).
Final thought: I transitioned to a Litter Champ with biodegradable liners. I love it.