Happily geeking-out about being able to put cat poo in the municipal compost. This could be enviro-, cat-lady-, or just-plain- weird. Whatever. My impact on the environment is lessened. Awesome. Although questions about costs and whether it’s really the best thing for the environment come to mind.
The background: Household organic waste collection is about 15 years old where I live. Some places in Canada it’s been done longer. Yard waste has been composted locally for a few decades. Until a few months ago, my collectible organic waste included food, tissue paper and hair/fur. Now, used cat litter and cat waste are included. Dog poo, diapers and personal hygiene waste are new additions too, and while a huge difference in what goes in the landfill, less squee-ly exciting for me. The absorbent pads underneath raw meat aren’t included yet. That would be fantastic, as their ick-factor are the main reason my garbage needs to be put out as often as possible. Alas, not yet.
A heavy environmental burden has lifted off my shoulders. Previously, the majority of my garbage was used kitty litter. It will cost me a bit more, as green bin1 deposits must be in a biodegradable bag, which mostly have to be purchased.2 A small price to pay for doing good for the environment, decreasing landfill and recycling waste into reusable products.
What does happen to organic waste when it leaves my curbside until it re-enters consumer circulation – if indeed that’s where it goes?
Elaborate provincial guidelines for the production of compost in Ontario stipulate where compost can be composted – reasonable distances from homes and other places humans congregate. This avoids unpleasant odours and the escape of bacteria and other micro-organisms (that do the composing) into places they don’t belong.
This doesn’t answer why cat litter was previously excluded but now included in what my home town recycles. When nature does it, composting is very inclusive, converting all organic3 material (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen based, i.e. stuff from living things) into a form living things (plants, herd animals, insects, micro-organisms) can consume to make into more organic things (vegetables, cheese, dried flower arrangements etc).
Cat poo is organic and should be compostable. Except litter. Whatever micro-organisms go along for the ride may be organic, but may be pathogenic (i.e. able to infect other living things), so unwanted in the final composting product.
Kitty litter is mostly clay, a naturally occurring dirt-type stuff, made of aluminum and silicon and oxygen4. Plants like clay and humans use it for building materials. So, while not basic organic elements, stirring kitty litter into the mass of organic waste would make it a more complete substance to return to the earth.
The Region has a good FAQ about the change to composting my cat’s toilet. An existing anaerobic facility, where gas byproducts are captured for conversion to energy5, is to be used. Surprisingly, it’s a couple hundred miles away = fossil fuels are consumed to deliver the green bin contents. Hopefully, it’s one step back and two steps forward in the environmental impact. The facility is located in farm country, so speculatively the compost is used to grow food.
The facility accommodates the new materials allowed in household waste. So why weren’t they collected previously? Components such as plastics are screened out. This has always struck me as the best way to ‘sort’ stuff. Householders have an incomplete understanding, and patience, for getting rid of their waste. It’s too much to expect of busy people to decide what to do with a thing that is part food waste and part plastic, so it ends up in the landfill. Recycling can be maximized by making it easy.
Ah, a new organization has been contracted to manage our waste, aptly called Circular Materials. This changes the business model, and the responsibility to bear the costs of recycling (of everything, paper products, plastics and organic stuff). Perhaps Circular Materials have better capacity to reuse cat poo or the new business model makes it financially feasible.
What happens to the organic waste once it’s compost? CBC says5: ‘With both aerobic and anaerobic digestion, the final product —compost —is sold to farms, plant nurseries, grocery stores and garden centres.’ This makes me wonder which of the many bags of dirt at the local DIY store have compost in them. Triple mix, which goes by a number of names, is 1/3 each of humus, peat moss and compost, so it’s a possibility. For organic material, composted manure is also available, although hopefully not the result of municipal waste.
While being able to recycle cat poo is very satisfying to me, the explanations found online about why this is now possible, and wasn’t before, aren’t.
Overall, it’s not clear why now we’re able to compost more things. The technology existed. Other provinces were doing it before we started. Technology adoption follows a path, with a few jumping in at the beginning, then an exponential growth phase as the thing catches on, then declining uptake because everyone has it. There’s likely a mundane, administrivia explanation to why I live in a late adopter area.
Cat poo, in its natural state, is composted, as cats bury their business in the earth, where nature composts it. The volume of house cats challenges this natural rhythm. But we fixed that, us clever humans :-). There is hope we won’t destroy the planet, as long as we hurry.
1 The affectionate term for the receptacles provided for organic waste, for placement at the curbside for collection.
2 An awesome entrepreneurial venture would be to have compostable bags that could be purchased from as many merchants as possible to take home new purchases. Once home, these could be repurposed to hold the next load of kitchen or pet waste, added to the green bin for pick up.
3 This is a different use of the word organic that the organic label that gets affixed to food grown under certain, considered to be ‘natural’ conditions, generally avoiding synthetic pesticides and genetic engineering. In this case, it’s the scientific definition of organic, which has to do with the composition, rather than how it was produced.
4 Multiple classifications of dirty-type stuff depend on how much rock, sand and organic matter is in the dirt.
5This is the preferable style of composter, as it does not put greenhouse gases into the environment, which can happen if organic material is let to decay in the open air. I learned this here https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/organic-waste-composting-1.5291132