Alright, just one more time…

[Pedaling Fool]

...Toilet paper is paper. It's no different to bury toilet paper than food wrappings, pieces of cardboard, trail journals or yesterday's New York Times. They are paper. If you're one of us who believes, "Pack it in and pack it out," has a meaning for not leaving waste of any kind along trails, you'll pack it out. Will it degrade someday? Perhaps. Will it affect the environment in an unnatural manner in the process? Yes, by definition....

163 things you can compost. BTW, composting is a process to decompose organic matter in the same way leaves on the forest floor decomposes. The only difference is that composting is an enhanced process. http://www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm

Paper napkins
Freezer-burned vegetables
Burlap coffee bags
Pet hair
Potash rock
Post-it notes
Freezer-burned fruit
Wood chips
Bee droppings
Lint from behind refrigerator
Hay
Popcorn (unpopped, 'Old Maids,' too)
Freezer-burned fish
Old spices
Pine needles
Leaves
Matches (paper or wood)
Seaweed and kelp
Hops
Chicken manure
Leather dust
Old, dried up and faded herbs
Bird cage cleanings
Paper towels
Brewery wastes
Grass clippings
Hoof and horn meal
Molasses residue
Potato peelings
Unpaid bills
Gin trash (wastes from cotton plants)
Weeds
Rabbit manure
Hair clippings from the barber
Stale bread
Coffee grounds
Wood ashes
Sawdust
Tea bags and grounds
Shredded newspapers
Egg shells
Cow manure
Alfalfa
Winter rye
Grapefruit rinds
Pea vines
Houseplant trimmings
Old pasta
Grape wastes
Garden soil
Powdered/ground phosphate rock
Corncobs (takes a long time to decompose)
Jell-o (gelatin)
Blood meal
Winery wastes
Spanish moss
Limestone
Fish meal
Aquarium plants
Beet wastes
Sunday comics
Harbor mud
Felt waste
Wheat straw
Peat moss
Kleenex tissues
Milk (in small amounts)
Soy milk
Tree bark
Starfish (dead ones!)
Melted ice cream
Flower petals
Pumpkin seeds
Q-tips (cotton swabs: cardboard, not plastic sticks)
Expired flower arrangements
Elmer's glue
BBQ'd fish skin
Bone meal
Citrus wastes
Stale potato chips
Rhubarb stems
Old leather gardening gloves
Tobacco wastes
Bird guano
Hog manure
Dried jellyfish
Wheat bran
Guinea pig cage cleanings
Nut shells
Cattail reeds
Clover
Granite dust
Moldy cheese
Greensand
Straw
Shredded cardboard
Dolomite lime
Cover crops
Quail eggs (OK, I needed a 'Q' word)
Rapeseed meal
Bat guano
Fish scraps
Tea bags (black and herbal)
Apple cores
Electric razor trimmings
Kitchen wastes
Outdated yogurt
Toenail clippings
Shrimp shells
Crab shells
Lobster shells
Pie crust
Leather wallets
Onion skins
Bagasse (sugar cane residue)
Watermelon rinds
Date pits
Goat manure
Olive pits
Peanut shells
Burned oatmeal (sorry, Mom)
Lint from clothes dryer
Bread crusts
Cooked rice
River mud
Tofu (it's only soybeans, man!)
Wine gone bad (what a waste!)
Banana peels
Fingernail and toenail clippings
Chocolate cookies
Wooden toothpicks
Moss from last year's hanging baskets
Stale breakfast cereal
Pickles
'Dust bunnies' from under the bed
Pencil shavings
Wool socks
Artichoke leaves
Leather watch bands
Fruit salad
Tossed salad (now THERE's tossing it!)
Brown paper bags
Soggy Cheerios
Theater tickets
Lees from making wine
Burned toast
Feathers
Animal fur
Horse manure
Vacuum cleaner bag contents
Coconut hull fiber
Old or outdated seeds
Macaroni and cheese
Liquid from canned vegetables
Liquid from canned fruit
Old beer
Wedding bouquets
Greeting card envelopes
Snow
Dead bees and flies
Horse hair
Peanut butter sandwiches
Dirt from soles of shoes, boots
Fish bones
Ivory soap scraps
Spoiled canned fruits and vegetables
Produce trimmings from grocery store
Cardboard cereal boxes (shredded)
Grocery receipts
Urine (It's true! Read the letters below)

[Pedaling Fool]

...Human solid waste is different from animal waste that is in the wilderness. It contains bacteria (some of them pathogens) and viruses that are not found locally, often including giardia or other paths that are transmitted by the oral/fecal route. It is now recognized that giardia is transmitted as much (if not more) by human waste; interrrupting this vector by not leaving it in the wild can help reduce that problem. Additionally, there are a lot of trace pharmaceuticals that end up leaching through groundwater (i.e. the water that flows at the impermeable level below soil) to water courses such as springs and creeks, with the result that wildlife up the food chain concentrates pharmaceuticals that are harmful. (Much of the soil along the AT is very shallow, and rock and clay are not far beneath the topsoil.) This is increasingly a concern of biologists, and it, too, is avoidable but serious.

4) Urinating on rocks is prudent; the water in the urine will evaporate far more rapidly, without concentrating the urine salts in a puddle in the ground....
The Weasel

Please provide a link to support your claim about how dangerous crapping is to the environment.

Pissing on rocks, you can't be serious

[Nean]

Wow, how did I miss this thread for so long?

I haven't read all of it but its sad to see people with age who feel entitled to leaving their trash/ paper in the woods. They probably are the same types who feel entitled to leaving trash in fire pits.

As for packin poop, don't ask, don't tell. Maybe that was another thread. I don't pack poo butt I can see where its not such a bad idea. I think it gets people away from addressing the paper issue though. Mix and bury your poop- I can live with. Don't pee near shelters. Pack out your paper or if you are just too uppity- burn it.

[Plodderman]

Hard to imagine so many post but I guess we all talk a lot of crap.

[The Weasel]

As for attacks on me by Saimoji (sorry for typo on name but I'm past the message), that's just par for the course. It's called an "ad hominem" attack, which means when you don't want to debate a topic on the merits, you just attack the speaker.

As for 'obsession,' well, I have a lot of topics that I've spoken to on WB over the years, a lot longer than Saimoji (sorry again). I was here before him/her, and I'll probably be here after he/she has left. This is one topic, and yes, the environment matters to me. Speaking sort of as a lawyer again, we in this generation do not really own property as much as hold it in trust for our children's children's children. We need to honor that stewardship; God gave us this Earth not to harm or pillage, but to protect. Others disagree with me. But this is not a trivial topic.

John? As for urine, I've provided a lot of cites over the years. Go look them up. Start with the VERY good book, "How to Sh** In The Woods." If you have an inquiring and open mind, you'll do your own research; if you don't, no amount of information I can give you will change your mind. And as for a couple hundred things that will compost, I loved how you skipped over "composting does it faster." Much faster. Sometimes months and years faster. Composting is a labor intensive activity, which is why many people try it and give it up.

I remain amazed at the lack of any answer to my question: If it is so unnecessary to pack out TP, why do we all consider it desireable to pack out our food packaging and other paper? Why not bury that, too, if burying is so harmless? The question contains its own answer, of course.

TW

[The Weasel]

163 things you can compost. BTW, composting is a process to decompose organic matter in the same way leaves on the forest floor decomposes. The only difference is that composting is an enhanced process. http://www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm

Paper napkins
***toast
Feathers
Cardboard cereal boxes (shredded)
Grocery receipts
Urine (It's true! Read the letters below)

So you propose to just leave any of these buried a few inches below soil anywhere along the AT?

TW

[Pedaling Fool]

So you propose to just leave any of these buried a few inches below soil anywhere along the AT?

TW

Not proposing anything, but if one were to, it would not harm a thing. And yes I did say it would compost quicker (given proper management) and decompose slower in a natural setting, but so what that doesn't mean it is harmful to the environment just because is decomposes slower.

As for pathogens and bacteria, they are all over the place. When an animal dies in the woods (happens all the time) it is full of pathogens that seep into the ground, or what about all the privies; where do all the pathogens go?(And those privies, whether muldering/composting/ conventional are teaming with pathogens. Pathogens are all around us, yet the biggest health issue on the trail is hypothermia.

[Pedaling Fool]

...John? As for urine, I've provided a lot of cites over the years. Go look them up....
TW

Actually, until this thread I've never heard of the LNT practice that promotes pissing on rocks in leiu of soil/plants. Don't worry about the references, I'm not interested, I wouldn't even read them. That's just more radicalized LNT crap as far as I'm concerned. People have been pissing in the woods along the AT forever and I'm sure the overwhelming majority of all pisses have been on soil/plants and it hasn't hurt a damn thing.

[The Weasel]

John's "certainty" ("I'm sure...hasn't hurt a damn thing.) reminds me of the joke from The Magnificent Seven, I think; Steve McQueen says, "That reminds me of the guy who jumped off the top of the saloon and said, as he went past the second floor, 'Everything's fine so far.'"

It's pretty well accepted in public health circles (my stepson has a Ph.D. there, so I listen to him pretty carefully) that human waste has played a major part in the spread - to pretty much the entire country - of giardia, from its originally rather limited territory in the west and far north of North America. Stopping such diseases - which also are devastating to animal populations - is part of the reason for encouraging better trail sanitation. And I reiterate that pharmaceutical residues, largely found in urine, are having an increasingly noticeable presence in groundwater that leaches from thin and rocky soils, such as is present on most of the AT.

It's true, folks. Just because John thinks it's not harmful to bury any waste - paper, garbage, more - isn't something to emulate. If you don't care about garbage and waste along trails, well, I can't make you care. But don't try to tell me that burying theater tickets, food waste, and - yes - human waste is harmless. It's not.

TW

[saimyoji]

As for attacks on me by Saimoji (sorry for typo on name but I'm past the message), that's just par for the course. It's called an "ad hominem" attack, which means when you don't want to debate a topic on the merits, you just attack the speaker.....

oh come off it Rusty....you know i don't bear you any ill will....just messin' around. i don't care if you wanna pack out your poop.

[Pedaling Fool]

Well TW, I think we’ve hit that "is not, is too…is not, is too…." wall. So no more reason to discuss this issue.

But two corrections:

... Composting is a labor intensive activity, which is why many people try it and give it up...TW

Composting is no more labor intensive than taking the garbage to the curb - you just dump it in a different location. The people that make it labor intensive do so more out of a labor of love. I’m surprised someone who cares so much about the environment as you made that statement, it shows you have no practical experience.

... human waste is harmless. It's not.

TW

Again, not saying it’s harmless; it is nasty and WILL cause disease, as do many things in nature, but nature will take care of it. And nature will take care of it much quicker in multiple droppings than in one large pile in a privy.

[The Weasel]

Nice try, John: Close a discussion and then argue some more.

No, composting is not easy. It is additional effort, and most people don't choose to engage in it for that reason. As for human waste, that's why we don't bury it in our backyard (perhaps you do, but that doesn't count): Human waste usually contains a high amount of protein-based waste, which ruins composting.

As for it not being harmful, well, your local sewage treatment office and most public health officials would agree that is is. Most of them will also agree that even when it decomposes, significant amounts of toxins or microorganisms leach from that into groundwater. That's a large part of why Giardia protozoons have spread throughout the backcountry: Humans are responsible, in many cases more so than wild animals, for that spread. While it might not be as great a problem in deep soils that are adequately far from water sources, rocky soils (such as most of the AT, the PCT, and the CDT) and shallow soils on top of clays permit leaching of contaminants which then flow along the top of the impermeable layer. On this one, I'll even 'pull rank' since as I type this, I'm in a courthouse in a case involving contaminant flow of leachate entering groundwater. It happens, and it happens a lot.

Those who don't care about these things should continue to leave their TP in the woods, along with the cardboard, theater tickets and all the rest of the things you say aren't harmful. The rest of us should pack all of those out. Even the Spamalot tickets.

So sorry; your 'corrections' aren't.

TW

[Nean]

Reasons TP- is not- considered litter:

A) no common sense
B) very little time spent on the AT
C) laziness and a sense of entitlement
D) all of the above!

[beakerman]

Geeze this is like the pi$$ing contest Nean and I got into over onteh sleping with your food debate...only more entertaining.

Weasle makes some very good points...I agree with the assertion that Giardia and probably Crypto too have greatly increased their range due to human activites in the woods.

I know he will never convince John to pack anything out other than what he currently does but he definitely has me thinking about it. Like I daid before I just don't like the idea of plastic bags/kitty liter...there has to be a better way. I'm going to invest some grey matter in the issue of how to do it rather than if it should be done and if I come up with a better idea then well I'll be rich right?

[TD55]

...there has to be a better way. I'm going to invest some grey matter in the issue of how to do it rather than if it should be done and if I come up with a better idea then well I'll be rich right?

Is there something that can be added to a cathole that would kill toxins and help with the decomposing yet be light enough to carry? Perhaps something in a little spray bottle you could squirt into the hole?

[russb]

Is there something that can be added to a cathole that would kill toxins and help with the decomposing yet be light enough to carry? Perhaps something in a little spray bottle you could squirt into the hole?

hmmm. My house is on a septic system and we regularly add a treatment to aid the process. It is a very light powder that is mixed with water and poured down the drains. There are 2 questions, one is whether this treatment destroys the toxins and second since the treatment itself is a micro-organism designed specifically to "eat" the waste will the introduction of this microbe into the wilderness have unforseen negative consequences? I wonder if some spetic safe treatments do not use microbes, but something else?

[russb]

the septic treatment also contains enzymes. I wonder if these alone would be effective and "safer" than the bacterial treatments.

[The Weasel]

Geeze this is like the pi$$ing contest Nean and I got into over onteh sleping with your food debate...only more entertaining.

Weasle makes some very good points...I agree with the assertion that Giardia and probably Crypto too have greatly increased their range due to human activites in the woods.

I know he will never convince John to pack anything out other than what he currently does but he definitely has me thinking about it. Like I daid before I just don't like the idea of plastic bags/kitty liter...there has to be a better way. I'm going to invest some grey matter in the issue of how to do it rather than if it should be done and if I come up with a better idea then well I'll be rich right?

There are a number of commercial companies selling "kits" which don't do much more than kitty litter or chlorine drops will do. They can be found on the Web. "How to S*** In The Woods" has a few contraptions that are more suited to canoes/rafts.

As for "adding something," you can't kill "toxins." Those are simply chemicals. In theory, most could be neutralized by other chemicals. Way too complex, and it won't happen. As for killing microbes, it's really hard to kill viruses, and some microbes don't give up easy, either. And to do it involves toxic chemicals which aren't good for the backwoods either (keep in mind that pharmaceuticals that would kill such things are by definition, "toxic" and "antibiotic".

I wish it were otherwise, folks, but sometimes doing the right thing isn't easy. But it's still the right thing.

TW

Is there something that can be added to a cathole that would kill toxins and help with the decomposing yet be light enough to carry? Perhaps something in a little spray bottle you could squirt into the hole?

[beakerman]

There are a number of commercial companies selling "kits" which don't do much more than kitty litter or chlorine drops will do. They can be found on the Web. "How to S*** In The Woods" has a few contraptions that are more suited to canoes/rafts.

As for "adding something," you can't kill "toxins." Those are simply chemicals. In theory, most could be neutralized by other chemicals. Way too complex, and it won't happen. As for killing microbes, it's really hard to kill viruses, and some microbes don't give up easy, either. And to do it involves toxic chemicals which aren't good for the backwoods either (keep in mind that pharmaceuticals that would kill such things are by definition, "toxic" and "antibiotic".

I wish it were otherwise, folks, but sometimes doing the right thing isn't easy. But it's still the right thing.

TW

I like the idea of enzyme treating the waste...see that is thinking outside the box. But Weasle is correct that it is hard to kill viruses and other microbes and anthing that would do so would most likely be a very bad actor indeed.

Weasle my problem with packing it out is the plastic bag itself. I work in the plastics industry, well sort of--I'm a chemist for sure at least that's what my degree says I am, anyway the problem is disposal of the plastic bag. This is why I don't drink bottled water, bottled soda or plastic bottled beer (aside fromthe general principle of beer not belonging in plastic). I use plastic but only in durable items not disposable things. I'm not 100% effective on my self-imposed disposable plastics ban but I try.

Plastic bags (Ziplocks and the like) take years to break down in the landfill. Worse yet they end up floating out to sea where they get scooped up by whales and turtles and such. That is not a good situation either. It's not packing out the poo that turns me off--I'm rather neutral about it really. It's not that I think I am going to spoil the world but when done in concert with the rest of the folks out there it adds up but how much can one person really do about it? Not packing it out is not directly harming me today: depositing all the pharma. load and the non-native microbes are at best microscopic long development time issues so it is easy to ignore them. Where as platics are visible and starve sea turtles.

Like I said as for the act of packing it out I am neutral towards and would probably sign on if a better system were devised...stand by I'm working on it.

[Nearly Normal]

hmmm. My house is on a septic system and we regularly add a treatment to aid the process. It is a very light powder that is mixed with water and poured down the drains. There are 2 questions, one is whether this treatment destroys the toxins and second since the treatment itself is a micro-organism designed specifically to "eat" the waste will the introduction of this microbe into the wilderness have unforseen negative consequences? I wonder if some spetic safe treatments do not use microbes, but something else?

How effective is the treatment after you run bleach or dial soap into the septic system?