Is silica cat litter flushable?
March 17, 2012 9:36 AM   Subscribe

Can I safely flush silica cat litter down the toilet?

I am using this brand of cat litter pearls in my cat's litter box. I know that regular litter can cause problems with plumbing, but is there any risk involved with this kind?

I wouldn't be flushing huge amounts of it -- just the odd number of pearls that stick to the feces when I flush those.
posted by Bukvoed to Pets & Animals (13 answers total)
 
Are you on a sewer system or a septic tank, I would think it would make a difference.

If you're on a sewer system, most waste water plants are not designed to deal with the toxoplama found in cat feces, this could have an environmental impact.
posted by HuronBob at 9:45 AM on March 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


You're not supposed to flush cat faeces at all because of the risk of Toxoplasma gondii contamination reaching the waterways (their eggs survive wastewater treatment processes), with the following risk to wildlife etc. Given how many feral cats there are in many places anyway you can decide how much you care. But because of this making cat litter flushable isn't high on the list of priorities of the people making the stuff.
posted by shelleycat at 9:51 AM on March 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Apparently flushing dog or cat feces into a sewer system can put wildlife (specifically mammals like whales, dolphins, seals, otters etc) at risk of Toxoplasma gondii infection. [Or, on preview, what they said.]
posted by hot soup girl at 9:54 AM on March 17, 2012


Stop flushing your cat feces, please, unless you have a septic tank. (If you're on a sewer line, or if you have a leach field system, you shouldn't be flushing cat feces because of the reasons mentioned above.)

And even if you have a septic tank, the silica cat litter can block the plumbing.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:11 AM on March 17, 2012


Well, to answer your question specifically, it is probably no worse than a kajillion other things that get flushed down the toilet that shouldn't be. I'm personally responsible, for example, for one Polly Pocket that I really, really didn't want to fish out. Once a cabbage leaf caused a week's worth of trouble because I thought it would biodegrade faster. So, if your question is about damaging your plumbing, you can safely flush it as much as others flush clay litter or other litters or small plastic things or tampon inserts or other odd things from time to time with results that can be predicted, but not guaranteed. In other words, not safely, but it's what's done.

I spent a lovely evening having drinks with a group of friends, one of whom worked in a waste treatment facility here in Toronto. The horror stories are still there, branded into my brain, and now I can qualify my own infrequent toilet abuses with "Well, I'm not flushing dentures and small animals." There are other concerns with silica litter that are significantly larger issues in regard to your cat's health, which are easily found with the Googles (as many as there are with certain clumping litters containing silica, and clay) - and HuronBob is right that "wastewater treatment facilities are not designed to address toxoplasma..." but for those of us who have to deal with cat feces, there are no perfect solutions. We all do the best we can - but because it affects the world at large, I try to consider what is best practice for the community rather than what I'd prefer myself. Though my formerly-feral cat rescued by my MIL from a colony spends part of his time outside, he uses his litter box a time or two daily, so that that I don't think he's frequently polluting our neighbours' gardens. There are a whole lot of feral cats around here anyway, another one that I feed who won't let me near him, so as I said - nothing is perfect when it comes to cat poop.

The best thing to do would probably be to check your local waste-management or Public Health website, and see what they recommend. For example, Canada Public Health offers "The Scoop on Poop" and in Toronto, it can go in our Green Bin. As much as nothing is perfect, doing every little bit to help, by doing your best, is something to consider.
posted by peagood at 10:20 AM on March 17, 2012


Regarding the toxoplasmosis issue, I've read on metafilter and elsewhere that it's not actually treated sewage but groundwater run-off from feral pets that has contributed to toxoplasmosis in wildlife.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:46 AM on March 17, 2012


Technically yes, morally no. Put it in a plastic bag, tie it shut, dispose of it and be done with it. Don't act like you don't buy groceries.
posted by oceanjesse at 11:18 AM on March 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


based on the 5th grade "what if everybody did that" and on my recent tour of a wastewater facility, I'd agree - scoop and put in trash can or bag that's heading to the curb or however you deal with other solid waste.

Wastewater facilities are indeed designed to handle just about anything that is physically capable of going down into the sewer drain, but the more garbage that gets in, the harder they have to work. And the fact that their bacteria mix is optimized for humans (in short, the bacteria that come out of our guts and wind up in our feces are used, as counter intuitive as it seems, to digest and clean up the rest of the pathogens in waste water) means that strange organic material is potentially a real issue, even more so than straight garbage.
posted by randomkeystrike at 11:50 AM on March 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


I used to know a municipal water person in SF. They said the only things that should ever go down the toilet is human waste matter and toilet paper. (Apparently those flushable wipes are not really flushable.) Obviously this isn't the case, but it's this other stuff that people toss that screw up the system.
posted by smirkette at 11:50 AM on March 17, 2012


Response by poster: Yikes! Thanks for illuminating me on that matter. So, does anyone have any tips for disposing of it, then? I don't take out the trash every day, and just leaving it there doesn't really seem desirable either (although that might just be a mental hang-up, I don't know).
posted by Bukvoed at 4:51 PM on March 17, 2012


I think the usual procedure for scoopable litters is to scoop a day's cat products into a plastic grocery bag, tie it off, and put it into a lined trash can (preferably a trash can with a lid the cat can't lift). Then at the end of the week take out that whole bag with the rest of your trash.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:58 PM on March 17, 2012


We diligently use cloth grocery bags, so we don't have a lot of plastic grocery bags around the house. We buy the cheapest possible paper lunch bags and scoop into those every other day. The paper bags go into the garbage, and as long as it goes out once or twice a week, the smell is not a problem.
posted by freshwater at 11:03 PM on March 17, 2012


For handling the disposal and hanging-around-until-disposal issues, we use small plastic bags on a roll meant for scooping dog poop. We scoop the waste from the litter box into the bag until the bag is mostly full, then tie a knot at the top and drop it in an airtight box (see below). Each bag lasts about two days with one cat and one box, scooping about three times a day.

To keep the room from smelling tragic in the meanwhile, you can use a Litter Locker, but we use an OXO Pop Container airtight acrylic box meant for storing food. I think ours is somewhere around this size. It's not perfect, but it's not bad. It holds about two or three bags and then it needs to be emptied into the trash and taken out.

Somehow, all of these links ended up Amazon, but we get our bags from pet supply stores and we got our Pop container at the Container Store, IIRC.
posted by swerve at 12:44 AM on March 19, 2012


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