How to Dispose of Human Waste While Camping

Video Transcript

" Hi, this is Bruce Lessels from Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com, talking about low impact camping methods. So one of the biggest impacts you have on the environment is human waste. A couple of different ways to deal with that depending on the area you’re in they might have regulations that tell you how you have to deal with human waste. On rivers out west you often have to bring along a portable toilet as a chemical toilet and carry everything out with you and that’s certainly very doable and you’ll know about that if that’s a regulation in that area. If you’re in a area where there is more active growth and where there’s more precipitation usually you can deal with human waste by digging a pit and going below the organic soil and then filling it back in once you’ve done your business and the area can ideally look pristine and look like it hasn’t been used. So the way to do that is to just dig down, you can use a shovel for this or a trowel or you can use your hands and just kind of dig down below the organic soil and you can usually get down there pretty easy till the color of the soil changes significantly. It should be 4 or 5 inches down usually, so there’s your toilet and then once you’ve done your business you just fill it back in, fill back over it and ideally that’ll be somewhere where the animals aren’t going to get to it and where the smell is not going to be a problem and it’ll just biodegrade under there and won’t be a problem in the future. The other one is of course whether to pee in the river or pee on the shore. Out west where there’s not a lot of precipitation you usually want to pee in the river because there’s not going to be a lot to erase that scar in the sand once you’ve gone and it’s not going to rain for a while most likely. In the east here we usually pee on the land, the dirt, there’s enough top soil in that dirt that it’s not a problem and it usually soaks in. But just try to you know, if you’re in a campsite where there’s a lot of use try to go far away from the campsite and try not to use an area that’s been used a lot."