Best practices for dealing with human waste in the great outdoors

Yes, this is a key thing to clarify anytime these conversations take place.

The reason we want to preserve the environment, biodiversity, all that jazz is FOR US. It’s for our own comfort and survival that we should care about not polluting, stopping climate change, etc.

The planet and life on it will be just fine, it made it through many extinction events and will make it through many more.

We also tend to congregate in high concentrations, since we have communication (and now social media!) to show all the best places. If everyone was dispersed camping on BLM land, somehow equally distributed regardless of distance from the road, it would probably be less of a problem, but when everyone wants to do ~the same extra special hikes and camp in the sameish spots, the concentration would get pretty high.

Also, animal shit can be bad for the local environment. There's a lovely lake near us, and a nice big tree with a sign on it from the municipal parks department saying "Cormorants are using this tree to nest. Eventually, their droppings with kill the tree."

Also what is left is what survives our digestive system. Or is adapted in it, but can thrive in wrong part.

Historically it was also common practise to die from diseases spread through fecal matter.

Or if not death, bad outcomes like hookworms, which were common in the american south and literally caused people to be stupid. They mostly went away when people stopped pooping in the woods.

Of course, it is all a matter of concentration.

I don't think this last conclusion is true. It's really about harmful bacteria, not "toxins". Even vegetarians have a complex digestive system that can harbour pathogens. Perhaps their faeces are safer to use as manure than those from a meat-eating human, but much closer to that than to a cow.

It is far from a certain that we are apex predators since we can survive on a largely herbivore diet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apex_predator#Human_trophic_le...

And "our shit contains the condensed toxins from all of the lower rungs on the food chain." lacks any credibility unless you can provide a link I have never seen.

The idea is to sacrifice one part of the environment (municipal landfill and surrounding land) in order to have everything else reasonably clean and beautiful.

(Alternative being a thin layer of waste and garbage spread all over the planet. First World did that until 1970s; many poor countries still do it. Looks shabby and ugly.)

I am pretty sure that elaborate process is the commenter taking the piss.

I have enough of dog walkers leaving bags of shit everywhere, and with our national parks overwhelmed and understaffed, I just carry a stuff sack hooked on my belt to throw it and other garbage into.

The laziness and disregard demonstrated by this society is sickening, and the senselessness is astounding. Why bag it and then just throw it right on the ground? That’s almost worse. This is rhetorical, of course, they think there is an army of park janitors waiting eagerly, despite the clearly obvious fact that these bags are just sitting there for days or weeks as well as the, I dunno, numerous large signs saying to pick it up and carry it to the trash cans. It really makes it harder to relax and enjoy myself.

I'm not a dog person but I think that one is totally explainable: if you're walking your dog in the neighborhood and it just did its business on the side walk, sharp eyes will be watching you to make sure you pick up after Milo or Daisy.

But who likes to walk around with a bag of fresh dog goodies in their hand? So it seems to be only natural that once out of sight enough, mommy is just gonna drop that gift bag at the nearest occasion.

In super dry climates, things don't break down the way you would expect it to elsewhere. It's the same reason why many interesting archeological findings like clothing items often come out of Africa. They've just been sitting there in the desert for thousands of years, it's too dry for anything besides sun damage to happen.

The paper takes more time to degrade into soil. Ashes basically are soil.

Apparently even if buried the paper would just sit there until the next flood then they'd find it all caught up in the trees downstream. Burning is a sure way to leave no trace.

I mean "Norway" is pretty clearly an anglicisation of Norge, much as Sagarmatha is of सगरमाथा.