I did it! 5 lb Base Wt

The real problem is that people will not pack out their TP nor will many of them even bury it. Pretty simple.

If using your hands was more sanitary than using TP, I guess we'd all be doing it at home. Sanitary is not getting deuce on your hands in the first place.

Sanitary should also include getting the butt cheek totally clean — which TP just can't do. The 'deuce' on your hand is easy to wash off / sanitize — but the stuff that gets caked up between the cheeks until the next shower, well…

Many in Europe and Japan have gotten it right — by installing bidets at home.

>>You see, my point is that I dont see TP as trashing our parks.

But… but where's the unmeetable challenge in bagging and packing out TP? This would seem to be the "middle way," would it not? Not so extreme as going paperless as some advocate, nor so cavalier that we "bs" ourselves into believing TP magically disappears the moment we bury it, or worse, that we know it'll be there for a while, that animals may dig it up, or that it otherwise might expose itself for public viewing, and conclude anyway that it's an acceptable risk for the reward of avoiding the icky factor.

Burying TP is basically a conditioned response: laziness and disgust make us want to be rid of it, we support our case for burial with whatever we've heard or convinced ourselves of over the years about how natural or biodegradable it is, and of course we have the overwhelming popular example on our side.

"Everything is biodegradable if you wait long enough." Who said that? In any case, at some point I think we have to move on from the whole issue of biodegradability, which is tenuous and subjective, and call on a higher ethic. It's an earned ethic, something akin to what stirs us (as opposed to some) to pick up a plastic soda bottle thoughtlessly discarded along the trail, or to shake our heads at the sight of an untended smoldering campfire. That's when it hits, if it's going to, that certain actions show competence and respect, others a certain society-bred disregard for the wilderness and of discovering our place within it.

This sounds comically overblown, but the TP thing is just one small part of the bigger picture. The longer we're out there, the stronger our bond with wild places, maybe the more humbling the thought of how alien to it we've really been all those years, as spoken by our actions.

Tp is hardly ever an issue for me in either civilization or outside, I will still use it once to check but I think that is a learned trait. I eat orgainc, fresh, vegitarian meals and am put off by the idea of people having so much to clean up. If you find it really messy I would say that the gross factor is small compared to the yuck that is going into your bodies that causes so much to get stuck and left behind. With a properly cultured GI tract you shouldn't really ever have to use more then a check wipe. As for Ben, I appreciate your enthusiasm for using your hands and water (the most popular cleaning method on this planet) but it can be an issue for others not accustomed to the practice. . I'm curious to know how those people clean themselves at home in the shower if that part of their body is so scarey (i think ben is suggesting the same thing, just in a more localized area)