Recently, I picked up a bag of walnut shell cat litter in an effort to have a zero waste cat. I decided that since I’m adopting all of these zero waste habits my pet needs to also. As a cat parent the first thing that I thought about was the cat litter. I started researching the impact of cat litter on the environment and was left speechless by what I learned
The mining of clay for cat litter causes depletion of natural minerals, forests, natural vegetation and wildlife habitats. It also contributes to flooding and changes in watersheds and erosion. Moreover, according to Judd H. Alexander in 1993’s In Defense of Garbage, over 2 million tons of cat litter ends up in landfills each year.
I started to feel bad about all of those 40 pound bags of litter I contributed to the landfills. Then, after a long woe is me moment I resolved to use environmentally sustainable cat litter from that day forward. There were several options, but ultimately I went with the option that had the least amount of cons. For me that was walnut shell cat litter.
Walnut shell cat litter is odor neutralizing and green. It’s dust free and doesn’t track. Best of all it’s natural and 100% biodegradable. Walnut shells are an annually renewable, non-food agricultural product making it very environmentally friendly.
So the brand that I decided to go with was Naturally Fresh. It was reasonably priced and came highly recommended. So far so good. I have one cat so I don’t know how well it performs for multiple cat. Nonetheless, what I like most is that its dust free. My cat gets the sneezies and this litter does seem to reduce her instances of sneezing upon leaving the litter box. It also effectively neutralizes her funk.
Overall, I am pleased with Naturally Fresh and will definitely buy it again. In the meantime, I will continue to explore other green cat litter options since these days there’s always something more innovative coming along. Have you given walnut shell cat litter a try to get a zero waste cat? Or have you found another environmentally friendly cat litter? What are you using?
