Clean Camping - Staying fresh and Leaving No Trace

Ever wondered how to stay truly clean outdoors without messing up the places you love? We pull back the curtain on camp hygiene with no-nonsense tips for safe handwashing, smart dish systems, and bathroom choices that protect water, wildlife, and your stomach. From what “biodegradable” actually means to why distance from lakes matters more than you think, we break down simple routines that reduce impact and keep your campsite calm and critter-free.

We start with first principles: preventing GI illness, avoiding scents that draw animals, and making soil do the filtering work soaps need. You’ll learn how to set up compact wash stations, strain food scraps from grey water, and decide when to use a cat hole versus a wag bag in fragile or rocky terrain. We talk gear that works—collapsible basins, light trowels, concentrated soap—and low-waste habits like packing out wipes and diapers, double-bagging scented items, and rinsing away from camp. For families, we offer kid-friendly rules that make clean hands and safe water second nature.

We also tackle menstrual hygiene with practical, low-impact options like cups and period underwear, plus tips on storage and rinsing that respect Leave No Trace. Along the way, we share real-world missteps (hello, solar shower rules) and how to read campground and park guidelines so your system fits the landscape, not the other way around. Clean camping isn’t about perfection; it’s about small choices that add up to healthier trips and healthier ecosystems.

If this guide helps you camp cleaner, share it with a friend, hit follow, and leave a quick review. Got a trail-tested hygiene trick or a tough question? Send it our way and join the conversation.

leavenotrace.ca

parks.canada.ca

outdoorgearlab.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Camp Hygiene Matters
• 0:58 The Solar Shower Misstep
• 2:29 Cat Holes And Distance From Water
• 4:04 Handwashing And Personal Care
• 5:55 Grey Water And Dish Systems
• 7:22 Frontcountry Disposal Do’s And Don’ts
• 8:43 Bathroom Basics And Wag Bags
• 10:35 Toilet Paper, Wipes, And Etiquette
• 12:10 Biodegradable Soaps And Eco Gear
• 13:41 Menstrual Hygiene And Kids’ Care
• 15:26 Leave No Trace Habits And Rules
• 17:08 Resources And How To Reach Us

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and good day. Hey, welcome to the Super Good Camping Podcast. My name is Pamela.

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

I'm Tim.

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

We are from Supergoodcamping.com. We're here because we're on a mission to inspire other people to get outside and enjoy camping adventures such as we have as a family. Today we want to talk about common but rarely discussed reality is gimmicky hygiene. So things about washing and doing dishes and bathroom breaks. We're going to be boldly going where no podcast has ever gone before.

SPEAKER_01: 0:28

Everybody everybody fails at it at some point. For instance, uh beginning of the pandemic, uh, I went out and bought a solar air quotes, solar uh water bucket. I don't even remember what the heck it was a contraption that basically was black, so it would suck up the heat from the sun and heat the water. And then like a shower stall, basically uh a dark shower curtain that had four sides to it. And then because I thought, well, you know, great, we're staying away from people, doing all the things. Uh, and then we got I got close to actually doing a front country camping and started to read the rules. You can't. You can take it on a you know, on if you're on a Crown Land trip or something like that, but not into an Ontario Provincial Park. So I returned all that stuff. All right, so it's been on. I was trying to be hygienic and safe and stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23

Well, and I appreciate that. There you go. I like it when you're more hygienic. Um, so why it's important? Because partly that if you're unhygienic, you can be getting yourself sick. So we want to prevent GI or gastrointestinal illness, skin infections. Um bugs might be more attracted to you if you're not smelling so clean. Uh, it's good for the environment, um, depending. So you have to be careful about what you're using and how you're disposing of it. And it can impact well, that's just we don't want to be it attracting animals andor making them dependent on us or more dangerous. Uh, and so as more people are camping post-pandemic, um, it puts more strain on the park's ecosystems as well to try to keep things clean.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06

Uh yeah, two two two of the things you're gonna hear a lot uh throughout this episode are uh cat hole, which is uh basically digging a hole about six to eight inches deep. So what's that, fifteen to twenty uh centimeters deep. Uh the diameter of said hole depends on what you're doing. If you're disposing of, say, gray water, uh it won't need to be it'll need to be bigger so that it can, you can, you know, you're putting a lot of fluid into there. If uh you're using it for your bathroom break, you you and you have good aim. You can you can make it smaller. Um the other thing you'll you'll hear is that regardless of what you're doing, you want to be 200 feet, so 60-ish meters away from any any water source. Uh whether it's a lake, you know, a burbling brook in the back of your your site, uh, whatever. We'll get to how because biodegradable the is a thing, except it's not like you just you don't wash in the water and it's fine. It doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_00: 3:08

One and the term cat hole conjures up images of a cat in a litter boxing doing this. You'll have a trowel.

SPEAKER_01: 3:16

Yes, I don't dig with my fingernails, uh although when I get back from a backcountry trip, it looks like I dig. Um and I just cut them off because I can't clean all that crap out of there. Uh yes, uh we we we take a trowel. There are all kinds. Uh go check out. You've uh chances are you've seen our or or heard our our episode on uh with Steve Evans uh Sulik 46. He has it wickedly light, very, very good, like an awesome trowel. And it was that's what his where he started from. So go check his out. It's it's cool.

SPEAKER_00: 3:44

Yeah, so with your personal hygiene, it's important for food prep, it's important to hand wash your hands before and after using the bathroom, or before prepping food and after using the bathroom. Uh use a biodegradable soap well away from your well well away from any water source. So even if it is a so-called biodegradable soap, we don't necessarily want it going right into the drinking water. And uh sponge baths, so and solar, as Tim mentioned, solar showers, but um only on Crownland, not in Ontario Parks, and rinsing things off without polluting the water sources, um, spitting your waste into the cat hole. So you're brushing your teeth, then you're spitting into a cat hole, and also away from water sources, uh, menstrual hygiene options, so sustainable options like menstrual cups, um period underwear, resealable waste bags, just so if you are taking something that's not um so sustainable, then it goes into your ziploc bag or something that's kind of well sealed, so you're not attracting animals, and making sure that you're packing that stuff out. And then with laundry doing like small loads, if you need to kind of scrub some things with minimal soap and then disposing of the wash water properly.

SPEAKER_01: 4:58

Yeah, and and just on the note of minimal, uh, and it'll probably come up later. The when you buy biodiversity for the sake of argument, we use camp suds uh most of the time. I think that's the name of ours. Um Canadian Tire. I almost said. Uh Outbound from Canadian Tire also has one. They're concentrated soaps, so you need very little of it in order to get enough sudsy business going on to get, you know, and to boot, you can just rinse your shirt off sometimes. Like why why would I clean a shirt that's only going to get filthy again, just and stinky and stuff, especially if I'm backcountry camping, just saying. Um yeah, if it's warm enough to jump in the water, you can jump in the water with the bigger. I often jump in with my clothes on and don't bother putting on a bathing suit or anything, just and not lay it out to dry. I get uh well, no, I just wander around until it finishes dripping and stuff. Keeps me cool for longer, right? Uh gray water management, dish and wash water. So it's uh why it matters is you've got food particles, you've got soap chemicals, and they harm the aquatic uh ecosystems. So when you're doing your your kitchen things, uh when you're when you're coming to to the wash portion of your program, strain out uh solids and pack them out with your food waste. And once it like if you've strained out, so so it's so the cooking part, but not not even the washing part, you know, it be it I would take it again 200 meters away once I've strained out the the food particles, take it 200 meters away and either do a large cat hole and dump it in, or at the very least, spread it around far 200 meters away from water sources, but you want it 200 meters away from your campsite as well. Because if it smells like food, guess who's gonna come visit you? Animals that are hungry. So use again, small amounts. It's it's you don't literally take drops, you don't be squirting it, besides you don't want to be carrying that's why it's concentrated because you don't want to carry you know a big big jug of liquid with you because it weighs a lot. I think a gallon of water is like 9.6 or 9.8 pounds, something like that. And that's so that's four liters. That that's but that's ten pounds. No, no, no. Yeah, and car camping, when you so there'll be designated places to dump it. Like don't go wash your dishes in the sink in the vault toilets or in the in the in the um comfort station. In the comfort station, or or when you you know the the the little spigot that'll be in between campsites. Don't wash it there.

SPEAKER_00: 7:40

No.

SPEAKER_01: 7:41

So you go and you see like somebody's egg breakfast like, what are you doing? Don't do it, don't do it.

SPEAKER_00: 7:46

Yeah, it just attracts animals and nobody wants that.

SPEAKER_01: 7:49

Yep. Uh so we use a it depends. You can use it with single stage washing where where you wash in a bucket of water, whatever that is. For us, we uh if we're backcountry, we've got a liner that goes that holds our mess kit together. Inside of that liner, um, we've set it in because it's soft, it doesn't have a lot of wall strength to it. We set it in one of our pots and use that to wash everything in. We wash it and then we use one of our water jugs, uh water bottles, uh, to rinse it into the same pot. So we end up with one bucket of water that we have to go deal with. Uh, if we're front country, we we do two. We have a collapsible bucket as well, so that we can you can you can wash in one and then just dip it into the other bucket, rinse it off, and then you take the two of them and go away and dispose of them properly.

SPEAKER_00: 8:42

Yeah, so bathroom basics and waste disposal in established campgrounds, so there's proper, like use the vault toilets properly, don't throw like other things, anything other than toilet paper and waste, don't go in the vault toilets. Uh and uh backcountrywise, so yeah, Tim's mentioned the cat holes, six to eight inches deep, 200 feet away from water, trails, and your campsite, and packing out things that don't belong there. Uh, wag bags, that I was gonna leave that to you because I don't know what that means.

SPEAKER_01: 9:12

Yeah, so well, so they're so they're often used in in alpine and high traffic areas uh or places that you're uh above the trees. Uh there's no grass, there's no you can't dig, it's just rock and stuff. Um uh for me, the as soon as I hear the word wagbag, uh uh rock climbers, especially ones that do multi-day climb, face climbs where they actually hang a sleeping platform, you've got to do something and it's gotta go with you. So you use a wag bag, that's what they're called, uh to pack out your waste.

SPEAKER_00: 9:46

Toilet paper options, a biodegradable packing out. Well, though I don't think most people need to pack out. As long as you're burying it properly, you can certainly just bury your for those of us on the ground, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 9:58

Yeah. Uh and but but do, please do bury it because we show up at sites so often and you and it's like, did it snow here? What's with all the white bits?

SPEAKER_00: 10:07

It was that's how it was when we were in Georgian Bay. It was like scattered, and you just knew where everybody had been going to the bathroom was because all the little bits of toilet paper everywhere.

SPEAKER_01: 10:15

Yeah, well, when when we went on our most recent uh the tomogamy trip, what our put-in was at a like a place with like a parking lot and a roadway, and it had toilets. And literally a hundred, not even a hundred meters away inside of the trees, but only about four feet inside of the trees, you could see a pile of toilet paper. It's like, but that you there's a toilet over there, man.

unknown: 10:40

Come on.

SPEAKER_00: 10:41

Uh so you could use something like leaves to be uh hygienic.

SPEAKER_01: 10:45

You could use leaves and uh pine cones have been used as well uh for clearing some things out. I have I have multiple thoughts. One, be really careful about what leaves you use, because that could go poorly for you.

SPEAKER_00: 10:58

Poison Ivy might not be.

SPEAKER_01: 10:59

That might not be a good thing. Uh three, let it be. Let it be. Yeah, don't be wiping your butt with that. Uh and I don't I'm not sure how I feel about it in a leave no trace, right? Like you're you're now so part of part of Ontario Parks, you can't take anything out of the park. You're not supposed to disturb things in in the parks. Uh, and I totally buy into that because it could be, you know, it's breaking down naturally to add to the soil, or it's a home for some grubs, or uh, you know, if a down tree could could be a home for anything, raccoons, squirrels, you name it. So I kind of be inclined to take uh toilet paper with me, uh especially one that doesn't have perfume or anything like that, um, because it will biodegrade if you put it in a cat hole and cover back up properly. Over time it will biodegrade.

SPEAKER_00: 11:50

Yeah, so the impact of human waste in the environment can be that you're adding nitrogen, phosphorus to the soil, which those are not bad. They're used for fertilizer, but that you can also be introducing pathogens that would alter the local ecology, might not be good for the local wildlife. Do you want to we mention some notes about like what to do or not do?

SPEAKER_01: 12:10

So yeah, it's uh at when you're when you're using the bathroom. Uh in the front country, you can wash your hands afterwards. There's usually facilities one way or another, depending on what level of whether it's a vault toilet or you know the comfort station, but there's usually something. Uh in the back country, not so much. Um hand sanitizer works very well. Small, like our package, our uh we have a Ziploc bag that will have toilet paper in it, and hand sanitizers. So uh do not, I don't this is a pet peeve of mine, do not use wet wipes, man. I don't care whether you're front country, back country. They're when they say flushable, that's because they can be flushed down the toilet. It's not good for any system to flush them down the toilet. There's a a place in London on the on the Thames River that is called Wet Wipe Island, and it's literally millions. I think they've just cleaned it up or they're in the process of cleaning it up, but it's literally millions of wet wipes that has actually affected the the river's path. Don't do it. Just just don't do it. They're not they're not biodegradable, they're not actually flushable. Take them if you I by all means if you feel a need to use them, but pack them out if you please. What I don't care how, or throw, you know, pack them and put them in a bag and throw them in the garbage, whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 13:30

Yeah, so uh biodegradable soaps, how how they break down, I mean they're not still perfect, and they're not safe in your drinking water. So that's again, you don't want to be necessarily dumping your biodegradable soap waste near where you're gonna get your drinking water from. Eco gear, so collapsible wash bins, so that's we have a collapsible bucket. We also have our, as Tim mentioned, our bugaboo, which has this soft liner in that can be used as a wash basin, um, solar showers, and resealable waste kits or wag bags.

SPEAKER_01: 14:02

Wag bags, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:03

Do-it-yourself hacks, so reusable cloths, which you can just bring in, bring out with you. Uh vinegar is a natural kind of eco-friendly thing, cleaner-wise, if you need something. Uh, and then otherwise try to avoid things that contain phosphates. So you might see that even on your laundry shirt that says phosphate-free, uh, microplastics, and anything with fragrances.

SPEAKER_01: 14:26

Yeah, all things that will alter the ecosphere of where you're at.

SPEAKER_00: 14:31

Okay, so we decided I would do this section because it's about lemon's hygiene stuff. Uh, so menstrual hygiene, just uh try to use something that you can bring out with you easily. So um there is reusable period underwear, that's super easy. Just take it in, put it in a Ziploc bag because it's gonna have a scent to it once you're done using it. So put it in a Ziploc tightly sealed so that you're not attracting animals. Um, you can use period cups, that's super easy too, and easy just to rinse those out. Although, again, you don't want to necessarily want to be rinsing them out anywhere near your campsite or where your water supply is. And for hot for kids, uh hand hygiene, trying to emphasize with them as well how how important it is that they keep their hands clean. Uh they don't want to be and they don't want to be um drinking water directly out of whatever lake or stream or whatever you're swimming in. And uh for infants, um diapers. Like how many times have we seen also like diapers just left out somewhere? So you have to bring stuff back out with you wherever you happen to be, and you can't certainly can't throw diapers down vault toilet, you can't just leave the diapers sitting somewhere, like it you have to bring them back out with you. Uh, and then yeah, um, proper sanitation is it's important for everybody in whatever context you happen to be in, but certainly when you're out in the backcountry, then or in nature, we don't want to be messing up our environment.

SPEAKER_01: 15:57

Uh okay, I'll take tackle the next one. So leave no trace. Uh an environmental stewardship. So dispose of waste properly, leave what you find. Uh, those seem very straightforward to me, but I would judging by what we do see when we're we're out there, we not not all the time. I'm just saying that it really stands out when you look and see something like uh toddler's you know, diaper. Is that no, no, that doesn't belong in nature, man. You take it out with you. Or or down in the vault toilet, because it's like, uh no, that also doesn't work. It says right on the sign in the vault toilet while you're sitting there reading. Just saying, come on. Uh small habits, you know, the the the washing your hands not in the the lake, um, you know, making sure you're using biodegradable soap. And I'm not sure that we were quite clear enough about so it's biodegradable, but it it's not biodegradable in water. It actually has to use the earth that it's going to, because it will end up in the water table, but it's it gets filtered by the earth as it makes its way to the water table. All right. Um, yeah. Uh that it it's those little things, they add up. They add up to in doing things properly, like you're going to have so much less impact on the nature that you're in.

SPEAKER_00: 17:16

Yeah, so clean camping isn't just about your own comfort and your own health, but it's also the health of nature and then it's an act of respect for the place that you're camping in. Uh so trying to make those changes, so switching to biodegradable soaps, making sure that you're disposing of your great water properly, making sure you're packing out anything that you've brought in.

SPEAKER_01: 17:36

And take a take a look at the what wherever you're going, um specifically to parks, but you know, take a look at their their rules and regulations. There's a reason they went to all that effort to come up with those things to protect, you know, all the things that we all love, right? So it's it doesn't take much to to educate yourself on what they say don't do, or you know, because different animals, different, you know, different uh ecology for different places, different areas means different rules. So I I I read, I mean, I I have issues. But I I read you know all the rules and stuff before we go to a certain place.

SPEAKER_00: 18:15

Well, along those lines of educating yourself, Tim's got some really great resources. So there's Leave No Trace Canada, which is the website is leavenotrace.ca. So that's a great resource. Parks Canada, so parks.canada.ca, and outdoorgearlab.com are all really great resources to find out about like what you should be taking in terms of soaps or what the proper sanitation procedures are. Uh and that's it for us for today. I think so. Uh excellent. So if you have any questions for us about camp hygiene or anything else, we would love to hear from you. We are at high at supergoodcampaign.com. That's H I at Supergoodcampaign.com, and we will talk to you again soon.

unknown: 18:56

Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 18:57

Bye.