On Aug 19, 2005, at 12:20 PM, Brian Gilbert wrote:
Has anyone else though about this a lot, or should I seek counseling?
No way Brian, it's just that no-one talks about it, I think. I actually had to use the "pee jug and plastic bag to the dumpster for the rest" for a while once when I was rebuilding a cabin. For some reason I never thought to use a Porta-pottie at the time. Duh. Anyway, I used to wonder if it was actually illegal or something to just toss bags of... #2 into the dumpster. Then I thought about all the disposable diapers people throw away every day. Technically, I think you're supposed to rinse those in the toilet before you throw them out, but I wonder how many parents do *that*. I've used a sawdust toilet in an outhouse at a friend's house. I say outhouse because it was out of the house, but it didn't have a pit like a traditional outhouse. He just lined a five-gallon bucket with a garbage bag (then it had a seat on top) and you'd toss in some sawdust after each use. After the bag got full he buried them in a deep, deep pit on his property. Not sure how ecological that was on account of the bags, but it all goes somewhere in the end, I guess. It's not like we don't throw a zillion plastic bags away every day anyway. Now, the outhouse wasn't right next to the bed like on a boat, but I will say it was a *lot* fresher smelling than the typical outhouse. I'm still wishing I knew what it was we used on the river trip. Not sawdust. I thought it did something chemically to dessicate the #2 or something. I do think it was lime or something in combination with lime. And I vaguely remember reading a murder mystery (or was it the book Helter Skelter years ago) wherein a corpse was dissolved with lime (see now we're really getting indelicate!), so maybe there's something to it, chemically. Or maybe the lime is now known to be worse than the original material you're trying to dissolve. At any rate, Brian, I've now proven that if you need counseling, I should be locked up ;-) Really though, I think it's something we all could benefit from discussing. I got to think about it a lot when I was out cruising for all that time -- with a 6-gallon holding tank... That's small, and you have to get creative. --- R.