30 Days of Going Green - Day 10
Written by Lori
Posted on March 23, 2009
Filed Under Green |
Sorry I missed a few days. My family went out to Monterey for the weekend and had a great time!
The purpose of this 30 day journey is to show how easy it is to make little changes that will result in a huge difference to our environment - multiplied by all those who join in on our journey. As you travel on this journey, make it fun, get the family involved and tell your friends what you’re doing. If all you do is to be aware of what you’re doing then that’s a great start!
Today’s goal is: Don’t throw cat litter down the toilet.
If you have a cat (or two), I’m sure you’ve noticed a lot of the cat litters say “Flushable” as if that is a benefit of the cat litter. However, you should never flush cat litter down the toilet and here’s why.
When cats eat rodents, they can get a parasitic disease called toxoplasmosis. This parasite exits the cat through the feces (which is why Pregnant women are told to not change the cat litter).
Sea otters are also susceptible to getting toxoplasmosis from cat feces that make it to the oceans. If you have an outdoor cat, please train the cat to use a litter box to prevent the rain from carrying the feces down the street drain.
There are only about 2000 - 3000 sea otters on the pacific coast and this number is not increasing as it should. The folks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium are trying to figure out why the sea otters aren’t growing in number but we can also do our part to help protect the sea otters by safely disposing our cat litter.
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Thanks for bringing this topic up. I wrote about it on my blog a while back and it is a huge issue. It’s still important to use eco-friendly cat litter, like FreshAire With Bio-Filters (www.freshairelitter.com), but never flush it down the toilet.