Want to Reduce Your Environmental Impact? Start With Your Cat Litter!

Before adopting Lumos and Noxie, I only really knew about 2 types of kitty litter – clay and crystal. It had been a while since we had new cats in our household, so we didn’t even know about the wonderful world of clumping kitty litter. So when Lumos & Noxie joined our family, we immediately reached for the cheapest crystal litter from our grocery store.

I thought “cheap and convenient”. What I didn’t realise was while it was “cheap” we were going through ridiculous amounts of it! It was not lasting long at all.

Lumos has had his challenges in the kitty litter tray and we realized that we were using 12kg of kitty litter a week! That was adding up for us. And don’t get me started on the challenge of storing 24kg of kitty litter in our tiny 2 bedroom apartment. After too many breakdowns while trying to find places to store kitty litter, we decided we needed to find another way. And we started researching.

Crystal litter is NOT good for the environment

I was shocked to find out how bad crystal litter (or silica gel-based litter) is for the environment! This type of litter is made from quartz, which is non-renewable and needs to be mined. And on top of that, it needs more than 10 times of CO2 pressure to make compared to other litters – which is not ideal.

And of course, it doesn’t breakdown in landfill with your kitties’ 💩. So then, what about clay litter?

Clay litter is also strip-mined and takes a really long time to break down in landfill too. So in short, it’s not so great for the environment.

So what options are available out there?

Early on, corn litter caught my eye. You can read about that journey here. I was excited when I found out that the Rufus and Coco team had developed a new eco-friendly litter in 2020 and jumped on board to give it a go.

Their new Wee Kitty Eco Plant Clumping Litter is made from wheat and soy fibres (kitty litter technology has come a long way!). Not only is it eco friendly, but it is also vegan and biodegradable (no more landfill waste!) I already know that the Rufus and Coco team make great products, so I wasn’t too concerned about whether it would be functional. But we have been blown away by how well it’s worked for us.

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Our must-haves with a kitty litter

Easy cleanup

Cleaning up kitty litter is no one’s favourite job. And in our household, we want it to be fast and easy.

We found the Wee Kitty Eco Plant Litter clumped well, making it easy to scoop and remove from the litter.

Previously, another frustration we’ve had with litter is that Lumos & Noxie would track it around the household and we would step on it.

But since switching to Wee Kitty Litter, we don’t find litter around the house. It really has been low tracking.

No more stepping on kitty litter ‘miles’ away from the litter box.

No more smells

Lumos is one of those cats who is absolutely adorable but tends to release some foul-smelling 💩. So much so, that we usually try to clean the kitty litter as soon as he goes.

But since we changed to the Wee Kitty Eco Plant Clumping Litter, sometimes we don’t even realize Lumos has used the kitty litter! We’ve been impressed with its ability to trap those smells.

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Convenient

I never appreciated how frustrated we used to be with storing kitty litter.

We always tried to keep a fortnight’s worth of kitty litter on hand (particularly if Lumos had a bad tummy week). And we used to store 24 kg of crystal litter every fortnight. That’s 24kg hidden in different places in our tiny 2 bedroom apartment.

But now with the Wee Kitty Eco Plant Litter, we only use 9kg per month.
We’ve gone from storing 24kg every fortnight, to 9kg every month.

And what’s great is that the Eco Plant Litter comes in 9kg bags which are resealable and have an easy to pour handle.

We’re also fans of the 4kg bags for when we travel. They’re a great size for keeping in the car and lugging from hotel to air bnb and back home.

Kind to our wallet

The Catexplorer team tries to live as frugally as possible, and that is why crystal was our first choice of litter.

The Wee Kitty Eco Plant Litter may seem more expensive than other litters, particularly on a per kg (or pound) basis.

But since we now use less kitty litter, in the long run, we actually save money.

We are now spending 8 times less than what we were spending before with crystal litter. 8 times less!

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