Biodegradable Kitty litter

brdgt · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 3:19 pm Post subject: Biodegradable Kitty litter

As an offshoot of the "An Inconvenient Truth" thread, I though we could share our experienced with biodegradable kitty litter.

I just switched to "Swheat Scoop" and so far I think it actually controls odor better than our old stuff and seems to flush just fine. I just cat sit for someone who uses "The World's Best Cat Litter" made from corn and that seems to work well too (Swheat Scoop was cheaper, so I tried that first).

Here are some reviews from Grist on different kinds of biodegradable litter. And this site has extensive reviews as well.

xuli · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 7:36 pm Post subject:

I'd be very interested in hearing peoples' stories of flushable litter. The idea intrigues yet scares me. Would I have to flush the toilet a lot more often, thus disposing of less trash but wasting more water? Would it "flush" like tampons, where all the labels say "flushable" and most of the time they are, but all of a sudden your toilet clogs and your plumber finds a whole mess of tampons way down in the pipes?

Despite these fears, I'm very interested in anything that would mean less cat litter in the trash!
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brdgt · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 7:40 pm Post subject:

I emptied the box with one flush. It had about three deposits of urine and as soon as it hits the water it breaks apart. Maybe I should get in the habit of combining one of my flushes with emptying it...

janaka · Joined: 01 Mar 2006 Posts: 433 Location: atlanta ga

my experience with 'flushable' kitty litter is EXACTLY what xuli described. it worked wonderfully for awhile and then my toilet (pardon the pun) took a dump and it took weeks to get it back to normal.

what i have been doing (this is a recent thing, so feel free to comment on it - even if you reprimand me) I have been doin' the litter box every other day. i have 2 cats, and they share a box, and are very poopie. i take the hardened poop and i scoop it into a bag, and then i throw it into the forest in the back of my apartment, because if they lived outside, that is where they would go anyway. I do not, however, add it to the compost heap.
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sweetpea · Joined: 20 Jun 2005 Posts: 137 Location: Boston

I use Feline Pine, which is made of pine shavings and breaks down when the cat uses it, becoming sawdust. The packaging says you can then toss this wherever--compost, etc.--as it'll just continue to break down. I toss it (city living) with the hopes that even out there wherever it winds up, it'll continue to biodegrade. A big plus of this stuff is that there's none of that nasty silica dust, and one 1" layer lasts two weeks in the box, so long as you clean out the poo and toss it around (my cat pees in one corner, so I have to shift out the dust and move the pellets in).
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xuli · Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:12 am Post subject:

OK, I'm thinking about this more and I have another question which is going to sound really naive, but I'm really intrigued by this biodegradable kitty litter (and by the idea of seriously reducing the amount of trash we produce!).

My question is, since I assume this isn't scoopable litter, how is using non-clumping litter different from using clumping litter? I've only ever used the clumping kind. I assume the pee doesn't form hard clumps, right, so what do you do with it?
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stella · Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 1:26 pm Post subject:

the pee kind of sinks to the bottom of the litter box and forms a soggy spot or wet bottom layer if you have a lot of cats. you can just scoop out the wet parts, but it doesn't hold together in a clump.

xuli · Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:42 pm Post subject:

Thanks, Stella. I promise the next question I ask you (or this board) will have nothing to do with the bodily functions of pets! :)
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stella · Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 12:28 am Post subject:

i end up talking about pets and their bodily functions at home quite a bit, with numerous pets and a mom who works for a vet, so it's actually sort of comforting (in a weird way).

delqc · Joined: 20 Oct 2004 Posts: 720 Location: Canada

brdgt - how is it going with the swheat scoop? I saw some for sale in the pet store the other day and it was really, really expensive. It also came in a disposeable litter box carboard thing and was like a one-time use thing (or afew days I guess) and I thought it was bizarre to have so much packaging on a product that was supposed to be enivironmentally friendly. I didn't buy it, in protest of the packaging. Ridiculous.

I did buy a bag of something called "Yesterday's News" (4x more expensive than my cheapie clay litter) which is supposed to be ultra absorbent, and to last 4x as long as clay. And it's made of recyled newspaper. I'm gonna try that out next week and report back ...
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Lyrae · Joined: 07 Jul 2004 Posts: 25

I went through a trial period with lots of litters after one of my boys was diagnosed with asthma.

In my opinion Swheat Scoop is the most scoopable (more than clumping clay) and the best at odour control (it kind of smells like a farm, but I like that) of any litter I've ever tried. Its downside is the tracking... it's like a constant battle, it gets ev-ry-where.

I also like Yesterday's News, but I find it involves more frequent maintenance and can reek of pee between scoops because you can't ever get all the pee-soaked litter out. Its best point is that there is NO tracking at all and no dust.

I'm using Yesterday's News right now but I'm going back to Swheat Scoop next.

brdgt · Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:35 pm Post subject:

So far so good! The Swheat Scoop does stick a little to the bottom, as some people mentioned, but it hasn't been a problem. We still have the old scoopable litter in the other box, so the cats still have a choice and they seem to be choosing the Swheat Scoop for #1 and old litter for #2! I don't think they are going to have a problem when they only have one choice though. In summary:
odor: same if not better than old litter
scoopability: good, a little stickiness on bottom of pan
cost: cheapest biodegradable litter at my grocery store
flushability: no problems whatsoever, one flush everything goes

Essentially, I feel like there is no "lifestyle" change for the cats, so I think we're going to stick with it!

delqc · Joined: 20 Oct 2004 Posts: 720 Location: Canada

Lyrae - do you acutually only scoop out the used bits of the Yesterday's News? Because what I do now is clean out the WHOLE box every second or third day - ie toss EVERYTHING, and then start over.

brdgt - ditto, do you only scoop the swheat scoop, or do you periodically start fresh?

If I was only scooping the swheat scoop, it might be economical ... but with a full change every 2-3 days it would cost me a FORTUNE. I could probably also ask the local pet store to get big bags of it rather than the small size ...

(I can't believe I spend this much time thinking about cat litter!!!)
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brdgt · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:33 pm Post subject:

Katrin · Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 1:30 pm Post subject:

We have 3 cats, and we've used Swheat Scoop for years. I was concerned about clumping clay litter being dangerous to cats' digestive systems (they lick the dust off their fur, and it accumulates & can cause intestinal blockage). I also hate the way clay litter smells - if there's any smell worse than cat poop, it's cat poop mixed with perfume.

When I was looking around for an alternative litter, I tried Feline Pine once. My cat hated it and made his disappointment known by using my dirty clothes as a litter box. I got the message fast. I think I tried the newspaper litter once, but I didn't like that it doesn't clump or control odor. The corn litter worked pretty well - the one I tried was scented with natural lavender, which was inoffensive - but yeah, it was pretty costly.

Swheat Scoop is rather expensive too, but it does work great. It doesn't stop odor completely, but it's better at it than any other litter I've tried. I haven't had any adverse effects from flushing it, but we don't flush it most of the time; we just scoop it and dispose of it in a plastic bag (negating the whole biodegradable aspect, I suppose - we should probably develop a better habit). Our cats had no problem switching to it.

We usually just scoop the litter rather than changing out the whole box, adding some fresh litter after scooping. Occasionally if the litter level has gotten really low anyway, I will empty out the whole thing and fill it up with fresh.