- Never sweep away debris at your tent site with your feet. Get down on all fours and pick up the pine cones etc.
- Digging trenches around your tent is out.
- Practice “leave no trace”. If there is an established fire pit, use it. If there isn’t one and you build a fire, be sure to remove all trace of it before you leave.
- Don’t wash with soap, biodegradable or not, while standing in a stream or lake. Fill a pan with water and wash well away from the body of water.
- What to do with solid wastes? The recommendations keep changing. You definitely should bury it and the most recent recommendation that I have read is that toilet paper should be carried out. You can burn it in your next campfire. I use paper towel instead of toilet paper. Cut each towel in six equal parts. You can better estimate how many you will need and I think they are less messy.
- Make an ultra-light backpackers trowel for burying solid waste. Mine weighs .9 oz and doubles as a tent stake. Cut a 7″ X 3/4″ piece of aluminum channel stock. With a file, place notches about an inch from one end and sharpen the other end to a dull rounded point.
- You may burn waste paper but plastic must be carried out.