Best practice to pooh in the nature and why...
Marc Vilaplana Traveria
Hi everybody,
My name is Marc Vilaplana I'm a rock climbing guide from Catalunya (Spain). In order to finish the third and last degree as a climbing guide I have to do a project. The project I'm doing is the management of human excrement in Catalunya climbing areas.
I've done research but I still have some basic doubts:
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How bad is pooh for the environment? Especially in climbing areas here in Catalunya where has become the mecca of sport climbing and we receive many climber. As climber stay all day long in a small area the excrements tend to rest in a small area. Do you think this is bad for the nature? Or is just a matter of respect to other and nature.
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And what about toilet paper? It looks like the best practice to pooh in the nature is the cat hole, but why we have to take the paper with us if it is biodegradable? Is it bad to bury it with the excrement? Again only a leave no trace practice or there's something else?
Thanks and take care!!!
Marc Vilaplana
Marion, Jeffrey
Marc,
Best of luck in your project. I can suggest some literature that may help. First, there is a wealth of information available through web searches, the Exit Strategy conferences and subsequent information, and guidance, and from the scientific literature (use Google Scholar searches). Here’s a few good references – there are many more.
http://www.trailspace.com/articles/backcountry-waste-disposal.html
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/exit-strategies-conference/id587484745?mt=2
http://blog.alpineinstitute.com/2008/08/human-waste-disposal-in-alpine.html
www.LNT.org You might also locate the book “Leave No Trace in the Outdoors” (Marion, Jeffrey. 2014. Leave No Trace in the Outdoors. Stackpole Books). This contains the current U.S. Leave No Trace program’s most comprehensive description of human waste management practices.
While writing the LNT book I investigated the science behind human waste management and the best single reference addressing your question about toilet paper burial is this one:
Bridle, Kerry, and Jamie Kirkpatrick. 2005. An analysis of the breakdown of paper products (toilet paper, tissues and tampons) in natural environments, Tasmania, Australia. Journal of Environmental Management 74:21-30.
I also conducted my own one-year study on my property and found that both buried and surface-disposed toilet paper (TP) decomposed completely in one year. Leave No Trace practices are science-based to the extent possible and the Bridle and Kirkpatrick research provides relevant findings to guide Leave No Trace practice for TP disposal. This study examined the decomposition rates of bleached and unbleached TP, tissues, and tampons buried at 2 and 6 inches in 9 different environments across Tasmania. Relevant conclusions were: 1) TP and tissues decomposed almost completely within 2 years in 7 of the 9 locations; tampons would likely require 3 years (Note: some are made of synthetic fibers that would require far longer), 2) decomposition was poor at locations with very high rainfall or acidic peat soils, but was very good at locations with as little as 20 inches of rain per year, 3) of 750 burials, 34 (4.5%) surfaced from animal excavations or frost-heaving (30 of which had been buried only 2 inches deep), and 4) nutrient additions simulating the presence of feces and urine to some samples increased decomposition rates. More studies like this are needed because soils, environmental conditions, and decomposer organisms in Tasmania may be different in other countries and locations.
It is critical to note the exceptions where TP (and human waste) do not decompose very rapidly. These include soils that are too cold, dry, or wet (year-round, not just in one or two seasons) to support decomposition, or rocky environments that lack soil. Land managers are increasingly recommending or requiring visitors to carry out their human waste, particularly in environments where it is extremely difficult to operate toilets or allow cat-holes, such as at high elevations, deep river canyons, deserts, or in arctic areas with permafrost. Cliff environments, caves, and slickrock areas represent additional settings where carryout recommendations and regulations are common. In all these special environments, human wastes have a higher probability of polluting water or won’t decay very quickly due to lack of appropriate soils, extreme cold, heat, or lack of moisture. Carrying out human waste and TP is the recommended “best practice” in all these special settings. (Note: the LNT book includes additional guidance for several Special Environment settings).
In areas where one or two seasons each year do provide conditions for TP decomposition: Burying TP deeply, by pushing it to the bottom of the cat-hole with a stick, is now strongly recommended to reduce the chance that it will surface before decomposing. Leave No Trace practices also recommend carrying out feminine hygiene products and disinfectant wipes due to their longer decomposition rates. We/I believe that asking visitors to carry out TP, which some to many visitors view as an “extreme” or at least objectionable and difficult practice, runs the risk of alienating them from considering and applying many other low impact practices. In other words, carrying out TP should be recommended only when truly necessary. Furthermore, visitors who are not digging cat-holes are likely to also ignore requests to carry out their TP – convincing them to dig cat-holes and bury TP deeply is likely an easier option.
Hope this is helpful.
Jeff
VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT-VT
Jeff Marion, Ph.D. USDI, U.S. Geological Survey Virginia Tech
Field Stn. Leader/Adj. Professor Patuxent Wildlife Research Ctr 304f Cheatham, 310 W. Campus Dr.
Natural Resource Recreation Virginia Tech Field Station Blacksburg, VA 24061
Websites: https://profile.usgs.gov/jeff_marion http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=h11GExQAAAAJ&hl=en
http://frec.vt.edu/people/marion/index.html E-mail: jma...@vt.edu, W: 540/231-6603
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Geoff Hill
Geoff Hill
Roger Robinson
NORM ACTIVATION THEORY AND HUMAN WASTE EDUCATION IN RECREATIONAL SETTINGS (attached)
Kristine Route (an intern who you had helping at the last conference) completed her master thesis yesterday on a human waste project down on Kenai Lake. I was a mentor to her through the process – she documented some serious impacts and conducted a survey that showed that while the anglers and partiers that use the site are generally pro-environment and care about human waste impacts, they are not particularly swayed by educational materials alone to do something about it. Probably need some regs, eh?
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"Human waste is a serious issue affecting our wild places and one we have the means to solve."
Marc Vilaplana Traveria
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Charlie Thorpe
On May 3, 2016, at 2:41 AM, Marc Vilaplana Traveria <vila...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you very much for all the information, every contribution is useful. You give me power to keep on going with all this issue!!
Take care!
Marc Vilaplana
Charlie Thorpe
You asked:
> • And what about toilet paper? It looks like the best practice to pooh in the nature is the cat hole, but why we have to take the paper with us if it is biodegradable? Is it bad to bury it with the excrement? Again only a leave no trace practice or there’s something else?
I tried to make the case in my previous email that the cathole is perhaps not the best practice in many situations if any reasonable alternative can be found. The good news is that “pack it out” techniques are becoming easier to find and use as a reasonable alternative.
Disposal of toilet paper in the wild is an interesting issue. I have been puzzled for over 20 years as to why Leave No Trace messaging makes such a big deal out of packing out toilet paper. I have been looking for and have never found any scientific evidence that the potential harm from leaving TP on the surface to decompose is anywhere near the potential harm caused by leaving its associated excrement sitting underneath it.
Exposed human excrement presents a HUGE potential problem as:
• it leaches into the water supply for other humans to drink it
• other humans come into contact with it as they move about the area
• insects, rodents, and other vectors spread the excrement around (even onto our food)
• its stink and knowledge of its potential harm to us spoils the otherwise natural beauty of the area
Exposed TP presents an environmental problem as:
• it introduces some VERY small leaching of non-natural chemicals into the soil as it decomposes (most of TP being made from substances natural to most areas)
Hummmm…which seems worse…the poop or the TP…? If we want to go to all the trouble of packing out bad stuff, why not pack out the really (really, Really, REALLY!) bad stuff and then pack the TP out along with it? If we aren’t up for packing out the feces along with the TP, then my personal take is that novices have absolutely no business trying to contain and carry out a genuine biohazard (especially in bear country, where it is a major smellable).
I have had the opportunity to help present the Leave No Trace messaging to tens of thousands of youth and adults at very large Scout gatherings (National and World Jamborees). My concerns about the “poop problem” have led me to volunteer to do the poop station at these events and this has given me ample opportunities to observe how a LOT of novice users of the natural outdoors can react to discussions about human waste disposal techniques.
I finally gave up trying to convince my audiences of the importance of packing out TP after a few thousand very obvious indications that the associated “YUK!” factor was causing these novices to not even consider this and the other ways I was offering to help us all become more responsible for the ethical (and practical!) disposal of our own human waste in the natural outdoors.
I now use the following scenario when teaching using catholes and TP:
• find a small sturdy stick (thick as a finger, about 25-30 cm long) as we look for the perfect cathole site
• dig the cathole the correct size and depth for the area
• take our dump into the hole
• use as little unscented TP as practical to clean ourselves and drop it into the hole
• hold our urine if possible and add it to wet down the TP (if not possible to hold, just create urine mud at the bottom of the hole)
• take the small stick and stir the TP into the feces, adding some of the nearby rich organic soil during the process (the smell goes WAY down once a little soil is on top of the feces)
• stir until the TP is dissolved into the feces and the rich organic soil is distributed throughout
• once the “poop soup” is finished, close the cathole with at least a couple inches of dirt and leave the stick sticking up at the edge of the cathole (messy end down inside…)
Hopefully, the TP will be so dissolved that any animal digging up the cathole will dispose of the TP as it eats the feces. The low incidence of animals digging up TP in Tasmania was interesting, but land agency contacts I have met have told me that coyotes in North America are MUCH more prone to dig up catholes to be able to eat the contents.
Again hopefully, distributing the rich organic soil throughout the feces slurry will considerably speed up the decomposition process.
I say “hopefully” above because, while it all seems reasonable, I haven’t found any science that covers the pro’s and con’s of this particular technique. I have been trying to talk Dr. Marion into including this technique in with his own TP experiments, but no luck so far <g>.
An interesting byproduct of this technique is that it can give us an indication of how many catholes are being dug in an area…just count the little sticks sticking up and notice how close they are to each other and to the water supply. It also lets us know that digging our cathole next to a little stick sticking up can lead to a BIG surprise…
We used to teach burning the TP in the cathole so that only ashes from the TP would be exposed if the cathole contents were surfaced. We were asked by land managers to quit teaching this TP disposal technique because wildfires have been started when the wind blows the burning TP out of the cathole (it’s hard to chase the burning TP to stamp it out when your pants are down around your ankles…).
I have found that many novices to the outdoors will react to this “poop soup” technique MUCH better than to packing out the TP…teaching to pack it out at first then allows “poop soup” to be more acceptable as the lesser of two evils <g>.
Good luck in your search to find solutions to the poop problem that work well where you enjoy the natural outdoors - it is definitely a search worth making!
- Charlie
Geoff Hill
Front country Euro climbing areas are substantially different from back country USA sites.
Cliff makes a barrier. Concentrates use.
Few climbs are hugely popular making for high concentration in key areas.
Temperate cliffs usually have thin and poor soils under them.
Ground under cliffs is usually steep compared to flat camp sites where use can concentrate at USA back country sites.
If I were to get involved in supporting cat hole use at steep sites, high use, poor soils, I would look seriously at PeePoople. Critical is killing of pathogens to prevent disease spread. Urea can do this. Consequence will be some exposed bags till they decompose.
Portable toilet and pack out not likely to work at concentrated site (optics). Maybe someone provides a screen for privacy. But surely it will collect Poo or bags of Poo.
Beyond low concentrations or extreme conditions (Denali) I'm convinced toilets are key. This is where TTS focuses our products. Ecodomeo.com makes these seats in France.
Geoff Hill
2067137805
6045053656
Charlie Thorpe
Thanks for the information. PeePoo bags look to have excellent potential as a low cost and practical solution in situations where initial distribution and final disposal challenges can be reasonably solved.
I particularly like the potential for being able to easily use the used PeePoo bags as fertilizer to help with revegetation efforts in the areas which tend to get pounded while the concentrated waste problem is being created in the first place. It would be fairly easy to handle distribution within a group of users (guided group, climbing club, customers of the local climbing outfitter, Scouts, etc.), but distribution to climbers arriving individually to the area would seem to require placing somebody somewhere nearby to hand the bags out.
I became involved in trying to solve concentrated careless poop disposal problems as part of a climbing program for older Scouting youth (coed) where I live in the USA south. Our novice climbers used cliffs and bouldering fields that typically were on private property less than an hour’s walk from the nearest road.
Local government in these rural areas was not interested in placing toilets (or any other facilities) at the roadsides where climbers usually parked. Land owners were even less interested (to the point of threatening to block access) due to concerns about them ultimately getting stuck with the cost and their possible legal liability associated with the chance of an added facility turning a natural area into an attractive nuisance.
We received donation of a small portable RV toilet that could easily handle a couple dozen potty breaks. This toilet came in/out each visit and was emptied at a RV dump station on the way home. We set 5 trimmed saplings as posts in an area a short walk from where most of the climbing/bouldering tended to take place. We carried in a light tarp to wrap around the posts to make a potty privacy screen each time we visited (typically 2 or 3 times a week during the summer, every now and then during the winter).
The portable toilet was oversized for the usual groups we brought in to climb, but we had no problem with allowing other climbers to use the toilet until it became full (happened occasionally). We also carried in a shovel every few trips which we used to bury the well-fertilized TP blossoms left behind by other climbers when the toilet wasn’t there.
AFAIK, we were the only organized group using the area - other local climbers didn’t seem to clump up and the climbing wasn’t sufficiently exotic to allow anybody to figure out how to make money off of it (no guides, no nearby outfitters, no property owner charging admission, etc.).
We ran our climbing program for three years and the place stayed pretty nice - we buried the small number of reoccurring TP blossoms and recycled the many Bud Light beer cans we picked up. The place went to pot (more like “potty”) after we moved our climbing program onto our own property.
Sometimes we have to come up with a solution with no more support from the land owner/manager than just getting permission.
- Charlie