How do you store your food waste trash at campsites?

[Guest]

Didn't realize we were talking about bears, thought we were talking about raccoons, squirrels, chipmonks and ants

Bears aside I believe the answer to packing food waste and garbage is “carefully”, and “thoughtfully”, and maybe “hard sidedly”. No one wants to add “Clean up torn the plastic garbage bag contents strewn about and dragged back in the bush” to their morning chores.

The same bear-at-the-garbage-bag precautions apply equally well to raccoons, squirrels and chipmunks, and makes for good “practice”, especially on habituated sites.

That does bring up the question of what is most animal attractant foodstuff or waste. Aside from thirsty raccoons and water supplies in the Everglades I would vote for. . . . . for hungry raccoons and unprotected bread anywhere. I know, peanut butter smell, bacon odor, and precious honey sugars.

Nope, bread. I have been too many raccoons making a getaway from someone’s site, waddling P. loctor bandit upright while grasping an entire loaf of bread out of an open food chest. Or more comically often from open car doors and trunks in campsite parks.

Waddling away happily chattering “Dude, major score, look what I got, a whole loaf of Wonderbread. My place tonight, bring the kids”

We have not had much of a problem with ants. Except after one trip along the Florida panhandle. Our last car-camping site flooded at the end of the trip and we headed home with wet tents and gear.

Which we spread out on the back deck to dry. Every single pole, from every tent, was filled with teeny tiny ants, each carrying teenier, tinier larva.

We have had some weird near microscopic ants in the kitchen to this day and I wonder if we brought home our own irritating invasive species.

 

[Seeker]

Over the years, I have developed a system, this is what I do most of the time.

First, I don't waste food by cooking 'extra'. If I make it, I eat it. I carry no metal canned goods, ever. Another rule is 'no wet trash'... So, no coolers, no fresh meat after the first day or so, specially ordered bacon (dry cure, not the wet junk you get at Kroger), and dehydrated one-pot dinners. I am a culinary bore/luddite/Philistine. Same food for the same meal for the entire trip, broken only by such wild variation as Buffalo Stew, Buffalo Pasta, and Sweet Italian Sausage for my dinners. On a weeklong trip, I'll get a double portion of those three meals and use not quite half each night (the nice thing is they're dry, so you just stick a piece of duct tape on them before the trip, to roll/secure the bag when you use some.)

Breakfast oatmeal gets repackaged in a ziplock with dry milk, brown sugar, and raisins. All of it gets eaten. I close the bag and keep it for next time in the bottom of my breakfast-food walmart bag. Lunch creates a cheese wrapper which is carefully and completely burned that night in the campfire. Dinner may create a plastic bag that receives a similar fate. Cleanup involves a few paper towels, also burned, and occasionally a soup, cocoa, or tea bag/packet, all of which are burned unless they are foil-lined, in which case they get rolled up and put with the zip locks. They get hung with my food bag more as a by product than by deliberate design.

To burn trash, your fire must be HOT, and the trash must be burned slowly and completely, not tossed in and hope for the best. Each plastic bag is placed on top of a log/stick, where it melts onto the wood, and is then completely burned before another one goes on. Paper towels are pretty easy. Cardboard boxes (rare) need to be torn into small pieces and burned slowly (not all that easy, because of the moisture they absorb). The rare plastic cup (pudding or fruit) is also melted onto a log and thus burns thoroughly. Tea bags require a bit more care, in that you have to rip them open first, or they won't burn up completely due to the moisture left in the leaves.

I do not fret over the tiny metal staple in the tea bag and tag... it will rust away. Aside from that, you will never find a trace of plastic, foil, or trash in my fire pit when I'm done with it unless it's someone else's (and I often dig through it on the last day and carry their junk out with me.)

 

[Odyssey]

We have had some weird near microscopic ants in the kitchen to this day and I wonder if we brought home our own irritating invasive species.

Sugar + Borax 1:1

 

[Guest]

One thing I find a lot in firepits is coffee grounds. They are hard to burn and should be packed out. I once surprised a bear when paddling that was eating grounds from a fire pit. Also, why is it that a quart sized bag of food turns into a gallon sized bag of trash?

 

[Iskweo]

Yeah Seeker...my plan too ...reduce the amount of waste that you bring/produce. All food gets eaten every meal. Water is on the stove during mealtime so cleanup is immediately after. Paper and plastic garbage gets burned as soon as possible or bagged and packed out. And yes, trash requires a very hot fire.

Coffee grounds. Well, criminal type that I am, I simply toss them in the water when I do the dishes and rinse the percolator basket out. Backup plan is to fling them into the woods to scatter them. I never attempt to burn them.

Fun fact...the only thing bears remember more than where they find food, is where they have been shot at. More shooting, less worrying. There are lots of bears. For the squeamish...bring lots of firecrackers and bangers.

My larger concern is also the small scavengers like raccoons and squirrels..and mice. Hence, nothing stays out between meals. One word...barrels.

Christine

 

[yellowcanoe]

I too scatter coffee grounds. We do this st home deliberately. They do make a good fertilizer component
A big lump of them in a fire pit is not nice nor useful

Our bears don't bother them. They associate human with gun

 

[frozentripper]

Paper and plastic garbage gets burned as soon as possible or bagged and packed out. And yes, trash requires a very hot fire.

It's the more exotic types of plastic that cause toxic effects, stuff like vinyl that contains chlorine. Chlorine often forms toxic compounds (sodium chloride NaCl, table salt is an exception). This is why humans planning to live on Mars will have problems, because of the chlorine toxic soil and dust. For some reason that plan to send a team of volunteer explorers to Mars with no hope of return has fizzled out.

Burning polyethylene in a hot fire should in theory produce only carbon dioxide and water vapor, and unlike wood, there shouldn't be any ash left behind... wood ash partially escapes as smoke particles which can cause asthma, coughing and horribly obscene language if it gets bad enough. And wood which isn't being burned completely in a hot fire will produce <cough> cancer-causing compounds like benzene and formaldehyde <cough... expletive deleted> according to chemists.

 

[Tom]

Hello everyone ,,,,, we can always limit the waste before leaving, I can leave 5,10 or 15 days solo without any waste to bring back and leave on the spot, this is a problem in nature is believed to be the only one to have passed, but by looking more closely, there is always a trace of human past, let by plastics, of any kind, bottle, and any other object ,,, nature is beautiful ,, we must be in harmony with this one.

 

[dogbrain]

I'll just chime in and say that I generally repackage all my store bought food to eliminate or greatly reduce the amount of garbage I produce. Of course, I only make the amount of food I'll eat at any one time and generally, after a 2 week trip I might have one or two quart size freezer bags with various wrappers and foil lined packages etc. At the end of a trip I end up with a bunch of used zip locks that have already been used before or will be used again. If I do happen to make too much food, I will put it in a zip lock bag and eat it for breakfast or lunch the next day. If I'm having fish for dinner, I always cook over a fire and burn the paper towels soaked with oil. I always hang my food by habit living in Griz country.

Mark