Can you recycle used cat litter?

This may sound a very silly question One of my New Year's Resolutions this year was to become more "green" and improve my carbon footprint. I have now managed to recycle plastic, garden waste, clothes, mobiles, DVDs, shoes, foodwaste, cardboard and stamps and my black wheelie bin is usually pretty empty each week. EXCEPT for the cat litter. I have four indoor cats and so (as you can imagine) I go through sacks of cat litter which at the moment I can only get rid off via the wheelie bin. Any ideas????

Home made flapjack?

Get the wood based stuff and you could probably compost it? However, I probably wouldn't use the compost for growing food in - maybe flowers to be on the safe side

You can buy cat litter which you can flush down the loo in small quantities, but other than that I think it's down to composting the wood or paper based litter. Cat poo really doesn't compost well though, so in order to do that you may have to sort it through and remove the solid waste first and you'd need to have a good mix of other garden waste for that to work as just cat litter wouldn't work either.

Please also remember that if you're going to change your cats' litter to a different one you may have to do that over a few weeks of mixing litter, and even then some cats won't go to the loo on some sorts of litter (I had one who would wee on the wood based litter but wouldn't even consider having a poo on it).

Please let us know if you succeed with this one as I'm sure there are others who would be interested in considering a similar experiment.

What a fragrant topic!

We use and compost wood based cat litter. The process is to scoop and flush the poo each day and then weekly dump the rest of the litter behind the main compost bin along with grass cuttings. It disappears pretty quick. Food scraps, tea bags etc go in the compost bin. However ours is a long garden and the composting is therefore a long way from the house, so I suppose it depends what space you have.

You shouldn't compost cat litter due to toxoplasmosis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis

Commercial composting reaches much higher temperatures so this may not apply to commercial treatment/disposal. Domestic composting of cat faeces is not advisable. The protazoan can be found in lots of places not just cat feaces but the cat is the only host where it can multiply.

I haven't composted cat litter but I found an interesting article about it online.

I haven't composted cat litter but I found an interesting article about it online.

What a load of poop! The author doesn't even understand what she is talking about. She talks about a virus but she means protazoan, the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis. She doesn't mention anything about the temperature required during composting to kill different things such as weed seeds, bacteria, protazoa etc. Its unlikely domestic composting will reach the required temperatures.

Well done you Cat for reducing your carbon footprint, if only everyone would. Just as I would if my cats toileted in the garden, I dig the poo in the paper and wood based lit into the soil in an unused part of the garden. I understand where Chez is coming from but I couldn't bring myself to put anything in the black bin unless absolutely necessary and I don't have kids playing in the garden.

Liia's suggestion seems sensible, followed by careful hand cleansing.

Often wondered what happens to the dog poo from the red dog poo bins. Poo in plastic bags?

I thought to do much the same but I have come up with a fairly good compromise, I think.

I converted the feline horde from conventional clay litter to one I got from Pets at Home, called Cats Best Okoplus, a wood fibre litter. Mine wouldn't look at the usual wood based pellets or the paper one but this one is very soft. Best of all though is that urine forms a funny gel and can be lifted out in a lump and faeces dries out and can get hooked out and lobbed in the bin. Even our Hanni, who is particularly disgusting if she gets near wet food, is tolerable using this stuff, which is more than I can say on the old sort of litter! The price is eyewatering at around 8 quid a bag but I reckon 1 bag lasts 2 big litter trays over a month so there is much less going in the bin. The instructions do actually say that you can bung it down the loo, I think, but I haven't tried that.

Oh, and I am not on commission!