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It’s natural for responsible horse owners to worry about the impact our horse keeping has on the environment.
Green Horse Brands is proud of products that support the health of the horse, their people and the planet. Our foundation product, dust-free Airlite bedding is a game-changer in the manure management component of environmentally friendly horse management.
Our Thymox all-natural disinfectant kills disease-spreading bacteria, viruses and mold spores without leaving toxic substances behind.
Airlite Dust-Free Bedding – Less is More
An average 1,000-pound horse produces approximately 31 pounds of poop every day, plus 2.4 gallons of urine. (It could be worse – elephants produce about 300 pounds of poop every day!)
And these numbers don’t include bedding that goes out with the manure and urine. Bedding can add 8 to 15 pounds of waste, per horse, per day, according to Penn State Extension.
That’s a lot of waste to haul away, with fuel consumption and cost escalating with quantity.
Made of pre-consumer cardboard, dust-free Airlite bedding reduces waste for three key reasons –
- Less is Needed – Airlite is up to 5X as absorbent as traditional wood shavings, so less is needed in the first place.
- Less is Wasted — It’s easy to pick out the manure bits from Airlite and to isolate and remove Airlite bedding that clumps together to absorb urine. So there’s less to remove.
- It’s Easy and Excellent Compost!
A Composter’s Dream
Horse manure is loaded with nutrients that make fertile soil for grass pastures, farming and home gardens.
Made from chopped, pre-consumer cardboard, Airlite bedding creates airflow in a composting bin, which is essential for creating nutritious soil. And the resulting compost is pH neutral dirt. When it’s spread on pastures it will not cause the grass to turn yellow.
As a general rule, composting can reduce a typical household’s waste stream contribution by 20 to 50%. Adding in horse keeping factors like soiled stall bedding, the impact of composting is even more significant.
Composting can be a money saver, too. Nutritious soil is sought by food growers and gardeners, large and small. Letting them haul away compost saves you the trouble and cost of doing it yourself.
Beyond the stable, using this Airlite bedding prevents the cardboard source material from entering the energy-greedy recycling process. Recycling a ton of cardboard, for example, requires 390 kWh of energy, 1.1 barrels of oil and 6.6 million BTUs of energy.
That one ton of cardboard equals two pallets of Airlite bedding, or 56 bags of our Standard cut or 96 bags of our Sport and Micro cut.
Keeping contaminants out of the water supply is key to the health of the environment. Composting is a big part of that and Airlite can make it easy to comply with watershed management requirements in many areas.
Non-Toxic Disinfectant
Disinfectants are critical to maintaining a disease-free horse or other animal habitat. Yet, they can damage a lot more than the bacteria and viruses they target.
Bleach, quaternary or hydrogen peroxide-based disinfectants can hurt the skin and eyes, irritate the respiratory tract, trigger allergies and corrode the surfaces to which they’re applied.
Spilled or washed away onto the ground, they can eventually take their toxic effects into the water supply.
Thymox all-natural disinfectant uses thyme oil – from the plant thyme – as its active ingredient. It is EPA-registered to kill 99.9% of all viruses and bacteria, including those that transmit highly contagious diseases like COVID-19, EHV-1, strangles and equine influenza.
It has no phosphates, chlorine or other chemicals that hurt the environment.
Thymox is safe on all surfaces. Rated in the EPA’s safest to use Category IV, Thymox does not need to be wiped off after application. That means less water required in the barn cleaning process.
True for Other Animals, Too!
What’s true for earth-friendly management of horses applies to the care of farm animals and pets, too. Choosing bedding and disinfectants with the environment in mind goes a long way in helping the planet – and all its inhabitants – stay healthy.
