everyone poops

This post is more advice seeking from any green Heloise types in the blogosphere. I try my best to minimize our carbon footprint, no small task when I've got a 5 year old and a husband who always leave the lights on after leaving a room. Maybe it was the years of doing photo retouching in the dark but I never turn on the lights unless absolutely necesary. Still any electric frugality on my part is totally offset by the males in this house and our Freestyle which gets much worse mileage than was originally listed on the sticker. Toby works for the Union so we have to buy American cars and due to my late onset driving phobia I need a car that I feel safe in next to all the Ford 250's and Excursions on the road. Our Civic got great mileage but I was terrified if someone bumped into us we'd be goners. But the real reason I'm writing is to figure out how to effectively deal with all the stinky poo that my cats and daughter produce. I always put stinky diapers and the litter in a plastic bag and then put it in the garbage. If I don't bag it the house stinks up pretty soon. There must be an alternative to using all these plastic bags but I don't know what it is. I could do paper bags but I don't think that will contain the smell. I've thought of putting everything in a diaper genie in the basement but if the cats get bothered by the smell I'm worried they might let me know by peeing or pooping on something and we already lost a mattress due to a really smelly, pissed off cat peeing on it. So if anyone has a tried and true trick for curbing the poo smell I'd love to hear it.