What to do with (bentonite) cat litter?

We have three indoor cats. They use bentonite litter. We bag it up their scoopings -- turds with a little clay on the outside and lumps of clay stuck together by urine, and have them hauled away to the landfill. I dislike this.

I've read a few other threads here about composting cat waste and I'm prepared to try that in a segregated compost location not for use on vegetable crops. I'm on 20 acres, so have a fair bit of flexibility that I wouldn't have in town. The stuff I've read mostly relates to using organic litters. A year or so ago, I tried to switch them from bentonite to recycled newspaper pellets. But if there was even one pellet visible, they'd stop using the box. (You gotta love these little knuckle-heads, right?!) I started out with mixing in like 1/4 and then reduced and reduced and reduced the ratio until eventually giving up. So I think we're stuck with bentonite, but might switch again to a biological litter once the eleven-year-old cat who I think was the primary problem dies off.



But on the other hand, we're on sandy loam with very little clay. Maybe adding bentonite would simply be good for the soil's water retention. Could I compost in a place that I want to build a pond in a few years? Or maybe just spread the compost under trees and let time do its thing to improve the soil for the next generation of stewards? Are there right and wrong kinds of clay that I should be concerned with?

I think there are four axes of permie-interest to this quandary: pet care, composting, waste reduction, and soil science -- and I guess I'm interested in insights related to all four. What do the rest of you do in this situation?

Christopher Weeks wrote:We have three indoor cats. They use bentonite litter. We bag it up their scoopings -- turds with a little clay on the outside and lumps of clay stuck together by urine, and throw have them hauled away to the landfill. I dislike this.

... to this quandary: pet care, composting, waste reduction, and soil science -- and I guess I'm interested in insights related to all four. What do the rest of you do in this situation?

Now that we have had a cat for about 8 months we have this same problem.

Dear hubby dumped some under our cedar tree in the front and the turds look like potato size rocks.

It is too windy here to compost and we only go to the landfill collection station aka the city dump about every month or two.

My plan is to find an out-of-the-way, close-to-the-house spot to dump these rocks where the rocks will just blend in with other rocks.

My only other thought is to do trench composting, basically just burying these rocks and then covering them up and forgetting about them.

I am not sure if there is a soil solution much less than a soil science solution.

This thread doesn't answer that question though it might be of interest to others:

https://permies.com/t/185931/Soil-redox-human-redox-cycle

Trench composting would be a great solution if it can fit into your yard and schedule. Depending on how often and how sustainable it would be for you you could just mulch a tree with it and cover it with a more aesthetic mulch every time. Making a separate compost bin/pile is likely to end up in the 'it was too much so it never got done' category. I would go with something that is one and done on each round.

Bentonite clay is so useful, and so hard to dispose of afterward. In industry, its properties mean it typically ends up contaminated and can't be recycled, ending up in a landfill.

Reduce:

Could you go with a two-box system to reduce the load on the bentonite litter box?

When we had cats, I too got tired of trucking cat litter to the landfill. Instead I kept a bin of poorer (unamended) soil in the basement where it wouldn't freeze and layered it on top of a base of dry spruce sawdust from the truss factory. It lasted longer and the cats preferred it over bought litter.

Reuse (pure speculation):

In my sandy soil, where water disappears, I wonder if a thin layer of bentonite about a foot deep would slow down the water movement and make it available to plant roots for longer. I have lots of terraces on hills so there would be some drainage in an unusually wet year.

Also, I wonder what a mix of dry char, bentonite slurry, and wood chips would do. I'm thinking about a trench where willows or raspberries could be planted. In a sandy soil, this might be useful. Then again, it might turn into concrete.

A blurb about bentonite use in landfills:
https://hub-4.com/news/the-use-of-bentonite-in-landfills

Yeah, I wonder if it's possible to disperse through the sandy soil to aid the soil's adsorptive capacity, but not create an impermeable liner.

I've also been wondering what the clay does to composting microbes. Is the nitrogen in the pee-lumps available to microbes?

I have a field dominated by wild bramble with a mix of other random plants. I cut several aisles into that last summer as a step toward making that bramble more profitable -- I at least want blackberries if it's going to sit there and take up all that space. But I've been playing with the idea of laying down the catbox waste pretty thinly in those aisles and covering with char and hay and then hoping that a combination of walking on it and time helps mix it in and produce valuable soil.

Christopher Weeks wrote:
But on the other hand, we're on sandy loam with very little clay. Maybe adding bentonite would simply be good for the soil's water retention. Could I compost in a place that I want to build a pond in a few years? Or maybe just spread the compost under trees and let time do its thing to improve the soil for the next generation of stewards? Are there right and wrong kinds of clay that I should be concerned with?

I think there are four axes of permie-interest to this quandary: pet care, composting, waste reduction, and soil science -- and I guess I'm interested in insights related to all four. What do the rest of you do in this situation?

I don't have cats anymore, but bentonite clay is just the thing for lining ponds with - I will probably have to import some when/if I make my pond, since my soil is very silty. I see no reason why it couldn't improve soil water and nutrient retention too. If you were going to do the pond route. I think I would dig the hole out and spread the clay around and just let it do it's thing over the years. Hopefully, eventually it would start to seal and become a damp spot. I don't know of anyone who has tried this, but otherwise you will potentially be digging the hole three times: Once to dig the clay out of where you put it, once to dig the pond hole and once to put the clay in.
If you just want to improve the soil texture, then I guess the only thing to watch out for is not to spread it where you are intending to grow food for a few years, or where small people play, since there can be nasty disease carrying parasites in cat poo.
Being able to reuse the mineral as a resource on site rather than just sending it to landfill is great.