Shunning toilets 🚽

Since the pandemic and even more so in recent years when I’ve learned more about septic systems and sewage treatment plants, I’ve had more and more of a desire to piss on trees and bushes, to crap in buckets and bury the poop in the woods.

I’m not saying there okay systems in urban areas that help protect the public health from dangerous diseases like Cholera and E Coli and protect water quality from excess nitrogen and phosphorus. But the solution seems to often to landfill such substances rather than recover the nutrients.

Maybe it’s just the freedom to pee wherever you want up at camp, up at the wilderness. Flip down the tailgate and pee. Spray urine wherever. Unconcentrated it’s pretty harmless though as noted on the Blue Ridge Parkway, too many people peeing on a tree can burn it.

Outhouses and composting poop outside of the cities makes a lot of sense. While both septic tanks and sewage treatment works biodegrade some of the sludge, a lot of it is lost unless it is collected and spread, a particular concern in sewage treatment plants is pharmaceuticals and long lasting chemicals like PFAS and microplastics.

I get people’s ick factor and concerns on public health but it just seems like such a waste to send it all to the local dumping grounds.