Australia & New Zealand Outdoor Adventure Forum

This is a question of an environmentalist who is an advocate against camping in the woods. His impression is that campers tend to ruin nature with the trash. And I have to agree with him although there are responsible campers who are neat with their camp and don't leave trash afterwards. When we camp out, we always dig a hole to serve as the trash bin. This is very important. Leaving your trash around in the woods is not a good idea.

I must admit that you get all kind of people with their own concerns and feeling of responsibilities. As far I am concerned I always carry a black and green polythene bag as per guidelines of the local government to collect and dispose the trash in proper way. We have self imposed as well government rules which most people follow strictly. However, as you said there are exceptional cases but follow campers try to keep places clean.

I wish everyone was cautious on what they leave behind at a campsite or just anywhere. This is one reason most places here are dirty and ugly. The government doesn't really do anything about it. Most people here throw trash anywhere and it's rare to see a trash can or dumpter to collect our trash in. The good thing is that the beautiful beaches are well taken care of since they are tourists places. Camping sites are nature and nature should be always clean but most don't care.

I usually leave nothing but the burned ashes of the campfire. If I have biodegradable waste, then, I manage to put it in a pit and put some mud over it. I take all the non-biodegradable stuff in a plastic bag along with me if its practices and provided are not in a jungle survival situation. The best idea about going for a cameo is to carry bio-dergadable stuff along and avoid things like plastic bottles, etc. so that you don't have to worry much about leaving the campsite dirty.

Alexandoy wrote:This is a question of an environmentalist who is an advocate against camping in the woods. His impression is that campers tend to ruin nature with the trash. And I have to agree with him although there are responsible campers who are neat with their camp and don't leave trash afterwards. When we camp out, we always dig a hole to serve as the trash bin. This is very important. Leaving your trash around in the woods is not a good idea.

I always like to leave the place as I found it, or even in a better condition. We once went for camping while I was in campus. All went well until the last day that we were leaving. The management said that we were a bunch of uncaring young people. This is because we had left nylon papers full of trash everywhere. Most young people do not realise that the environment needs to be kept clean. It took a lot of convincing and my friends gave in to spending one more hour at the campsite patching things up. We collected trash and threw it in the pit. Sometimes it is good to be futuristic. In the short-run, dirtying the place may not harm you but in the long-run, the effects may hit us all hard. Global warming, climate change and change in ecological conditions might be one of the consequences of the trash you left somewhere.

When we camp, the only leftover would be our burnt woods from our campfire. For other biodegradable wastes, we would dump in a pit and cover it. Other wastes I carry it along wth me in a separate bag and dispose of it safely after reaching home. This has made me feel responsible.

I agree that most if the campers litter the whole surroundings. Whenever we camp we make it a point to that we dig a small hole where we dump all the waste during the camping period. I always make it a point that we keep my surroundings clean.

That should be taking seriously keeping the environment clean during and after a camping outing. One thing some of the substances we go with on camp like plastic or rubber made substances hardly get decayed and if dumped recklessly would constitute serious nuisance.