Updated: 27/12/2020

How to Dispose of Cat Litter

When it comes to care and affection, all pet parents want to shower their felines with love. While all cat and dog parents know that loving and disciplining their pets is a lot like raising children, cleaning up the waste and refuse is equally essential. Knowing when to clean out the trash and how to dispose of the cat litter is crucial to the health and wellbeing of the pets. Cats are known to have litterbox aversion if the waste isn’t cleaned out regularly. Most pet parents fail to understand this crucial aspect of cat behaviour and end up blaming the cats when they do not use the litterbox. This behaviour also leads to the surrender of many cats. When it comes to your felines, you should always invest in the best cat litter.

Disposing and replacing the litter in the litterbox every two to three days is ideal for cat health to prevent harmful urinary tract infections, respiratory diseases, and allergies. Knowing how to dispose of cat litter is essential for cat health and also for the health of others in the house. Uncleaned waste tends to smell foul and affects the clean environment of the home. 

Why should you Responsibly Dispose of Cat Litter?

Proper disposal of waste is the responsibility of each citizen. The best way to reduce your cat’s footprint is to ensure that your cat does its business indoors. While we will not be debating the merits of natural versus indoor defecation, the only reason to train your cats to use the litterbox is so that the urine and faeces do not contaminate the groundwater supply in your garden or backyard. Cat litter should also never be flushed. Wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to handle the parasites found in cat litter, which will further contaminate the human water supply. 

Cat faeces may contain a protozoan parasite and oocysts. When flushed, these oocysts are carried to treatments plants that are not equipped to treat them. Sea animals like otters are at risk of protozoan parasites in cat litter. Always select the best option by disposing of cat litter in kitchen rubbish bins. 

How to Dispose of Cat Litter?

There are a few ways that you can dispose of cat litter.

Compost Cat Litter: Not many people agree with the composting method of disposing of cat refuse. However, it is an effective way of recycling litter in an eco-friendly manner. To do this successfully, you should purchase compostable cat litters and organically dispose of the waste. Instead of dumping the waste directly into kitchen rubbish bins, you could process it in a compost pit and convert it into fertilizer that can be used in the garden. 

By choosing biodegradable litter in your garden, you would be reducing your cats’ footprint and saving the environment in the long term. Reducing the amount of garbage in landfills and composting it helps in returning nutrients to the land. 

Trash Cans: Before dumping the waste in random bins, you should spend some time researching the best kitchen bin for your specific use. Depending on the size, make, brand, material, and volume, you should purchase a kitchen bin that can successfully hold the refuse of the entire household, including pet waste. 

• Use a strong trash bag.

You should purchase some heavy-duty, strong trash bags to hold cat litter. Cat litter can get heavy once it is soaked, and you do not want the bag to tear during transport. Using thin bags to contain cat litter may tear at inopportune moments and spill out over the floor and stink up the whole place. Clay litter is known to be one of the heaviest, and can easily tear bags. The only way to avoid this is to purchase heavy-duty bags.

• Put in the bag before dumping the litter.

If you can carry the litter directly to the trash can, ensure you put in a thick bag. Holding the trash bag in hand and trying to pour the litter does not work since small bits of the rubbish fall out, and spoil the floor.

• Separate the cat litter from the regular trash

If you do not plan to use the cat litter in the compost pit, separate it from other organic waste to reduce mixing up or contamination. Ideally, mark the cat refuse as toxic waste, and dispose of it in the same manner. 

• Use a new trash bag each time.

Do not store the trash bag each time. Instead, use a new bag with each litter. Once you use a fresh bag, tie it up tightly to ensure no odours escape.