Ship something from the UK?

Would someone be willing to buy something in the UK and ship it to me? It should be inexpensive to purchase (10 pounds), and while it'll be somewhat large in size it should be very light (3-8 pounds).

Ah hell, I'll just post a link. It's only slightly embarassing...

Yes, it's for cat poop.

It's not available in the US until February, and I'm tired of carrying out cat poop in little plastic bags to the kitchen trash cans. I have the other version of this, but this one is a better design.

What's better about the new one?

I could do it via UPS/DHL but it'll cost more than the product's worth

I think Babies R Us stocks something like this...

The first model has an entirely different mechanism. It consists of a wheel that turns, trapping the waste in sections wrapped around a central "spoke." It's hard to explain. But the downside is that it doesn't use the space inside very efficiently, and you have to end up emptying the device pretty often.

The new one, however, just puts everything into one large bag that is far easier to remove than the current system.

If you're so inclined, there's detailed flash animations of how the two work here.


I figured the shipping would be more than the cost of the product, but I don't mind that. What does make me pause, however, is that I've asked the company, and apparently the replacement cartridges for the old model don't work for the new one. So I'd probably want to get the 19.99 AND one of the replacement packages.

Any idea how much that would cost to ship? Looks like I'd have to commit to $35 to $80 before shipping...hmm...


Heh, I thought the same thing. I should just get a diaper genie!

The images on the first link look like they're using Diaper Genie refills. Basically a long tubular bag that gets twisted in sections each time you use it (as Matt described).

The animation in the second link doesn't show how the internal bag mechanism actually works. This is definitely inspired by diaper pails, but it's also got a nice receptacle for the shovel and likely the opening is better suited for shovel use as opposed to dropping a tightly wrapped diaper.

You could always wrap the cat shit in shiny foil paper, stick the pieces into a heart-shaped candy box and send the package to someone you don't like. At least that's how the story my grandmother told me went...

Ugh. Screw the whole cat box scene.

Next cat I get is gonna get this treatment.

That would be wonderful. I can never see my cats going for it, though. Too bad.

I used to flush the stuff down the toilet, which made things a lot easier, but the litter we use now can't flush.

The original version used refills that were almost, but not quite, exactly like Diaper Genie refills. You could kinda-sorta jury-rig Diaper Genie refills into the thing, but the rings were just a little bit too small.

Ah, so you have a litter locker of your very own?

I do, but I don't use it any more. It never worked all that well. Mostly, it was flimsy and kept halfway falling apart.

I'm not surprised. I don't think the build quality stands up to the complexity of the mechanism. That's why I'm interested in the new model, which is basically a bag with a removable pinch at the top.


You're right, but I think it essentially uses gravity to pull more of the bag out. The first model uses the turning mechanism to mechanically pull more of the bag out. This one, as far as I can tell, just does it with gravity. I'm surprised they designed it this way, frankly, as it seems a lot more efficient, resulting in less income on refills for the litter locker company

It also looks like there's no great need to actually purchase refills from them. I see no reason you couldn't use a regular garbage bag. Well, other than odor permeability. Their refills are cellophane-like, rather than the more rubbery plastic regular trash bags are made of.

I don't mind shipping this over for you.

If you are not in too much of a rush I could ship it via Royal Mail but there will be a delay as they are striking all over the place at the moment. It would be the cheapest option I would have thought.

Just PM me.

Cheers

Cris.

That's still likely a better proposition than Matt shipping the litter via USPS to the UK.

Good to know about the Royal Mail situation though. I know what I can tell some customers about apparent delays.

DHL tell me £8.00 per kilo

Hmm, that's a little better than Royal Mail was offering. I estimated about 10 lbs (about 4.5kg, right?), which they said would be about £50. Chris was very kind to offer to help me out, but I told him that for that much, I'd just wait until February or whenever they finally come out with the thing.

I'd certainly wait till Feb if I were you.

Seeing as this product STILL isn't out in the US, I had to find another source for the "Litter Locker."

Is anyone in Canada willing to order and ship this thing for me, and have an idea of how much it would cost to ship?

It looks like the Canadian and US dollars are roughly equivalent right now, is that so? I'm getting around $83 US dollars for $85 Canadian (I'd be getting the $85 package).

Matt, I'll gladly do it for you, but, they DO ship to the US from that site you linked. Take a look and post back if I'm mistaken...

Um...okay, that's weird. I looked this morning and didn't notice that, but you're right. I even emailed the company and they claimed they couldn't ship to the US. Strange.

Well, I'll give it a shot, thanks for offering!

I honestly can't think of any legitimate reason they wouldn't ship to the USA. Unless of course they don't want to make any money. Sales to the US would outnumber those to Canada 99-1 easily, regardless of what the product is. It's also cheaper to ship to the US than it is to ship within Canada with Canada Post. If they do enough volume with UPS, they can obtain discounts to ship to the US that they'd likely never be able to get for shipping within Canada. Etc etc...

Let me know if you run into any issues placing your order and I can definitely handle re-mailing for you if you need it.

I just scoop the litter waste into a plastic bag then throw it into my outside garbage can. Am I missing a better way to do it? Or is this just for people who live in apartments and can't access outside trash easily?

Some people just want the latest technology in cat waste removal

Well, I'll own up to that But really I'm all about addressing daily household activities, and figuring out ways to make them easier.

Currently I do the bag thing, but I'm going through the bags like crazy, constantly having to replace them. Plus, I do live in an apartment, and the trash is about a 600' walk away.

As I read it, if that handle came off, it would be eligible for parcel post, insured, at £8.32, delivery up to six weeks:
Pets at home (Who have 2 in stock at my local store) give the dimensions, as follows:
HWD: 44.4x25x23 cms.
Weight: 1.2 kg.

They quote the same for packed and unpacked, which seems odd, it only has to be 24mm smaller (900mm. max H+W+D) about an inch, to qualify, but I can't see Royal Mail waving it through any larger.

If you want me to check it out, the store's just by my daughter's where I am tomorrow and I'm at the Post Office on friday: Let me know?

I use plastic grocery bags. You can never run out of them- of course depending on the grocery store you go to asking for plastic bags is kind of frowned upon anymore. But I actaully use them for something so I don't feel bad. The whole plastic bags taking up too much landfill space idea is kind of overblown anyways. The real contributors to landfill space are two things: Newspapers and Construction Debris. The answer to those two is pretty easy- recycle your newspapers and re-use building materials when possible.

I think the problem with plastic grocery bags is that they're very lightweight and can be picked up by the wind and deposited all over the place, notably including waterways, where marine life can mistake them for jellyfish and try to eat them. Similar issues exist with other lightweight plastics, like styrofoam.

I don't think I've ever heard of anyone complaining in particular about grocery bags taking up too much space. I think there is a general concern with the overuse of disposable goods, especially non-biodegradable ones, and grocery bags are certainly part of that.

As far as newspapers go, I don't think we'll have much problem with newspapers much longer.

Yeah. I've never heard the landfill space issue before, and with Portland considering a bag ban (they're holding off, so that Oregon can deal with it on a state-wide basis), it's been in the news frequently over the last several months.

You mean you aren't rinsing them out and re-using them? Planet killer.




You know that you can get a 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot for, like... $3 right?

Neither of which goes into typical landfill here. Newspapers are recycled and have been for some 20 years wherever I've lived. Large-scale construction debris is usually sorted and parts of it reclaimed. Large sections of concrete and other unreclaimable materials around here have been used to build out new land over water. The Toronto Islands, Ontario Place and Tommy Thompson park to be specific.

Plastic bags are a hazard for wildlife and water systems (treatment, drainage, etc.) Not to mention they're made of petroleum products. You should consider using biodegradable bags and then composting your cat poop. Or, flush the cat poop - it will go directly to a facility designed to deal with it.

The bags I get from the supermarkets here are now made out of some kind of biodegradeable plastic as they literally fall apart after a few months. I used to keep all the bags I got as I could reuse them when you can't do that now as the bags just don't last.

Apparently you're not supposed to compost cat feces because of the relatively high likelihood of it containing toxoplasmosis cysts.

Agreed that plastic is a hazard if you let it get out of the landfill- but I'm not doing that. The plastic bags aren't blowing away with 3 pounds of cat litter in them. Flushing cat poop and "urine cakes" (solidified litter) from the catbox would be a very bad idea. A sanitary sewer system cannot handle that- you would probably clog your sewer line costing you potientally hundreds of dollars. The only way it would work is if you didn't use cat litter at all and that would make your house smell disgusting. I wish there was a real biodegradable solution to cat litter but I don't see one at the moment.

Yes, I didn't mean that you should flush any gravel type litter, just the poop. Better still is to teach your cat to go right on the toilet, like in Meet the Fockers.

I've seen videos on YouTube showing you how to train your cat to do that.

...hmm... seems to me we've touched on this before. I'm sure we have.

I was responding to a person who said that they put the litter in a bag and then put the bag in the trash outside. I can't do that because I'd be walking out to the trash every single night, which I don't feel like doing. I currently put the bags in my trash inside and then take it out every other day because we have a 13 gallon trash can that fills up quickly.

There are a couple reasons I don't use grocery bags. They aren't designed to hold cat waste - odors leak from these much more than bags designed for the purpose. Similarly, about half the plastic bags I get from the store have tiny or larger holes in the bottom (possibly from carrying the groceries and stretching the seams in the plastic). Sure, I'm talking about 2mm holes at most, but that's enough to let little pieces of soiled waste through and again, lets odor through. Also, no matter how tight you tie the handles together, it's not an air-tight seal.

I'm currently using these bags which stow in this. Despite the 22 cents per bag, it's still worth it for the convenience. Still, I think I can do better

I double line the grocery bags, and use a small lidded pail that's about the size of the grocery bags. When the pail fills, the bag gets tied, and put outside in the trash.


22 cents a bag? You are getting hosed.

Yes, that's actually the standard, here, and it has been for the last 5 or 6 years.

Dunno about the others, but the Toronto Islands apparently predate modern trashy white people. The Leslie spit is a debris of beauty, though.

The local municipality here, explicitly wants cat litter tossed into the "new" Green Bin containers for composting, rather than into general waste.

So long as the compost is allowed time to really cook (high temperatures), it's probably fine. But this is municipal "governance" we're talkin' about, so..

Check Babies R Us or similar, they have bags for holding poopy diapers that block/cover the smell.

They need to get one of these then, not some feline diaper genie. I have one. It's wonderful. I don't walk any cat crap to the trash. Now getting the dog to stop trying to find snacks in it...

Wow. Nice device, and insanely expensive (to operate).

That CatGenie is just bloody awesome. I don't think I could ever own a cat without something like that.

Is that litter or litter + crap? I know a few people that put the used cat litter in their flower beds (the ammonia in the cat pee is supposed to be good for the soil, or something), but all the fecal matter needs to be taken out, first.

Crap included. Weird, but that's what they want.

Interesting. I wonder if our green bin folks allow the same. I'll have to check it out. Right now, the litter box stuff accounts for approximately 1/4 of our weekly trash.

Nope. "Curbside yard debris does not include [...] animal waste" Of course, it also says no food waste, but I throw that stuff in there, too. What's the difference between a weed (allowed), and a piece of old lettuce (not allowed)?

I would think that it would take a while for the granules to dry ? but yeah aside from getting the cat to use a toilet I can't see how the technology could advance past this

That sounds like what our council calls "yard waste". We have separate, seasonal pickups for that stuff. The green bin program is explicitly for food scraps, meat, fat, bones, used tissues, and other biodegradable house waste.

Cheers

Same as Mark here, except no animal waste allowed in my current municipality (it was allowed in the previous).

Yard waste doesn't have a dedicated bin here, you generally use large paper bags.

It has a blow-dryer, so once the granules are washed, they're blown dry. From what I've read, the entire wash/dry cycle takes about 30 minutes.


I can. If you read enough reviews, you'll see that thing is not without its design flaws. It uses a ton of water and electricity, and it takes a page from the inkjet printer manufacturer's playbook, and has proprietary, non-refillable cartridges.

In the end, I decided to stick with a regular litter box.

Yeah... that's what it's called. I put anything biodegradable in it, with the exception of animal by-products, which I still put in the trash. It's not seasonal, though, as yard-cleanup is year round out here.

Yard waste around here in the winter is typically snow. And it just melts away in the spring.

Oh, yes. I've not been an expat for so long that I've forgotten about the snow. I have fond memories of walking down the middle of Yonge St. one winter evening, when there was a over foot of fresh snow on the ground (and still coming down). Ordinarily a lot of traffic at that time of the night, the only cars on the road were a few foolhardy taxis, and they weren't moving too quick. At least, not forwards.