Shar left us a message on our “Suggest An Item” page:

I have increasing numbers of empty Purina one cat food bags.

Because they are plastic foil they are not accepted by my local council for recycling. [I’m in uk]

Bag has a zip lock. Sturdy item. Not sure what to do with them. I would gladly donate them to somewhere if I knew a place that re-used them.
size: 23 cm width / 27 cm height. Folds flat. At present these add to landfill. {cringes}

Any ideas how to recycle / re-use? [I do not have a garden or balcony, so no independent outdoor space]

We’ve asked about plastic pet food bags before but it seemed to be slanted towards big dog food bags – the size that can be used as grow bags or sealed rubbish/garbage bags. So any ideas for these smaller ones?

The zip lock element is interesting – making them easily water resistant if not full-on waterproof. I was reading the other day about the importance of having copies of all important paperwork (personal identification, bank details, insurance stuff) grouped together in a sealed easy-to-grab folder in case of an emergency – but someone else on the forum pointed out that such a file would be an identity thief’s dream — putting it in something like a couple of Purina bags would make it a lot less obvious. That would only use up one or two though – so any other suggestions?

(I’ve contacted Purina to see if they have any recycling advice: if they reply, I’ll add the info here.)

Our lovely old cat Boron has had the last of his teeth taken out this week – he’s always been prone to gum problems and while gummy, he seems happier now his mouth isn’t so inflamed.

Our vet says he might still be able to have dry food – which has made up the bulk of his diet for most of his life – but once he (Boron, not the vet) knows we’ll give him more wet food if it’s too painful/awkward for him to eat biscuits, I suspect he’ll made demands for that all the time.

When we had four cats, we used to feed them cat food from cans – a can per day between the four of them as a treat, alongside unlimited dry biscuits – but after losing two of them, cans were resulting in too much food waste and we had to switch onto pouches. It was a struggle for me, giving up easy-to-recycle cans in favour of annoying just-about-impossible pouches — a toss up between packaging waste and food waste.

Now Boron is going to be eating more wet food, we might be justified in moving back onto cans – or, sigh, we might just end up generating more pouches.

I’ve contacted a couple of cat food companies to see what they advise doing with the pouches – I’ll update this post when I hear back from them – but in the meantime, do you use pet food pouches?

Do you have any reuses or recycling ideas for them?

Well, less of a “reuse/recycle”, more of a “what else can eat them?” question…

Our cats are becoming increasingly fussy eaters in their old age. They’ve always been pretty fussy but now they’re teenagers, it’s getting worse – and we end up with a lot of mostly full boxes and bags that they are just not interested in eating.

We’ve swapped cat food with friends and neighbours in the past but all our felines have reached that certain age now and either had their teeth removed or as fussy as ours, so there is less swap potential. The supermarkets around here collect food for local animal shelters but I suspect they’ll only want sealed boxes/bags to be sure nothing has been tampered with.

I’d rather not compost them as I suspect the smell will attract undesirables to the heap but I also don’t want to just bin them. So any ideas?

We’ve had an email from Alana:

The kibble I get my dog has switched from being in paper bags to plastic ones. What can I do with them now?

You may still be able to recycle them – the plastic cat food bags we’ve got are labelled as recyclable (although not actually saying what type of plastic they are, just that “most councils accept them for recycling” – a great example of the unhelpful lack of information that Simon was complaining about the other day – I suspect they’ll be LDPE, ie number 4 plastic). Check the packaging for similar (although hopefully more helpful) recycling marks.

As for reuses, they’re pretty strong plastic and sometimes with a zip lock seal at the top so can be used for a range of airtight/waterproof storage purposes. An idea for smaller bags might be to decant washing powder from cardboard boxes into the bags to stop it absorbing moisture from the atmosphere. Bigger, dog food size bags, could be used in the garden – a seasonal idea might be to use them for leaf mulch. Staying in the garden, the bags could also be sliced open to use as plastic sheeting to protect crops over winter/discourage weed growth (although with the usual caveat that plastic that isn’t specifically designed for outdoor use tends to break down in the sunshine).

Other ideas?

We’ve always tried to minimise the amount of waste our cats produce by buying in bulk where possible, choose recyclable packaging over plastic bags and they mostly eat biscuits, which have less water content so aren’t as heavy/bulky to ship.

Except now one of them is sick – very sick – and is having trouble digesting regular cat food. I’ve become incredibly familiar with cat food ingredients (and also the consistency of cat poop) over the last few months and the better quality stuff (stuff that is made up of at least 50 or 60% the meat/fish it claims to be – most cat food is around 4%) seems to come in small quantities in plastic pouches, or tiny, teeny cans. Enter loads of extra waste.

I try to feed her frozen fish/mince at least once a day – since that has a considerably lower packaging cost – but worry that she’ll miss out on essential vitamins/minerals if I just feed her those all the time. I’m happy to make her food from scratch but don’t have time to do it at every meal time since she’s eating lots of small meals throughout the day. I’ve tried making a chicken & rice mash before but it didn’t really interest her.

Unfortunately for us, this is a short scale problem with this cat (*sniff*) but looking at the ingredient lists on the standard cat food boxes & cans has made me want to do better by the other cats.

So has anyone got any suggestions for how I can reduce the amount of cat food packaging waste we’re producing? Anyone found any decent quality cat food (dry or wet) in large quantities rather than tiny sachets? Any popular homemade cat food recipes?