Arowhenua, Aoraki & Mountaineers: A Research Project - NZAC's Position

This series of articles first appeared in New Zealand Alpine Journal #79 (autumn, 2024). The other articles in this series can be found here.

Lead Waste Monitor Checks In

by Karen Leacock

When I became the General Manager of the New Zealand Alpine Club seven years ago, I imagined that the job would involve organising amazing climbing events, supporting publication of our fantastic literature and generally finding ways of promoting climbing in New Zealand. All of this is true, and I feel privileged to lead the Club. What I did not anticipate was that I would spend so much time talking about toilets, human waste and the practical issues of dealing with it. The reality of my job is that the hours I spend working on our accommodation assets, which are significant, are mostly spent talking about poo. I have learnt how septic systems work, the design of toilets, the fallibility of pack-out systems, and the cultural and social sensibilities around human waste. Sometimes I refer to myself as ‘General Dogsbody’ for the breadth of tasks that go across my desk. I also wonder whether perhaps ‘Head Poo Patroller’ or ‘Lead Waste Monitor’ might be more apt titles. 

All jokes aside, the issue of human waste, when considered with a financial, cultural and sustainability lens is one that the Club and the mountaineering community have been grappling with since we started recreating in the mountains. While I hope that everyone has moved on from simply doing their ‘doo-doo’ in a crevasse, we are still far from any type of solution—though many great minds have contributed significant time to working on a solution.

Last year, an opportunity to work on a group project for a course I am taking at university allowed me to form a group to have a closer look at our alpine toileting difficulties. With three other willing investigators, we immersed ourselves into the sticky situation of human waste.

A search of the NZAJ archive reveals an excellent article, addressing the same issues as I will cover, by Lani Evans and Jonathan Clearwater from 2006. That is 15 years ago, and I could largely insert the article into these pages today—not a lot has changed. That doesn’t mean that people haven’t been working on it and there has been progress. What has been lacking is momentum and buy-in to create this change.

However, it does feel like this project is gaining momentum. In 2016, the Club hosted the Sustainable Summits Conference in Aoraki Mt Cook Village. At the time, there was much enthusiasm and progress in carry-out systems overseas, and these have been in use for many years in places like Denali National Park. While there was support in New Zealand, there were also challenges, and despite a strong push from then NZAC President Penny Brothers for coordinated work on a New Zealand specific pack-out system to be implemented with the new Mid-Tasman Hut, no project was initiated.

In 2020, the Club received a bill for $5000 from the Department of Conservation for waste removal from our high alpine huts on the West Coast. Usually, the hut fees collected covered the costs associated with the removal of the toilet drums from Pioneer and Centennial Hut, but suddenly, the drums had magically filled themselves without an associated uplift in hut fee income. How could this be? Ghost users? Leaky rooves letting rain in? Tahr magically opening the doors with their hooves to urinate in our toilets? It was an expense that I wasn’t expecting and sent me on a mission to examine the waste removal from all the NZAC alpine huts. Turns out that the two West Coast huts weren’t the only culprits, with Colin Todd being subsidised by Aspiring Hut, Ruapehu just breaking even and some of the base lodges also facing significant septic pump out charges. 

Financial burden on the Club may have been the catalyst, but we also place pride in doing the right thing. Sustainability is front of mind for us as we see the changes that climate change is bringing to the places that we love. Reducing helicopter fly time, and the time used by our dedicated volunteers dealing with these unpleasant situations, are also motivators. 

Further to these practicalities, doing the right thing means respecting the wishes and mana of tangata whenua. The mountain ranges of Aotearoa are considered the Tipuna (ancestors) of Maōri making these areas sacred to tangata whenua. Also, the areas where the NZAC huts sit, are generally on or above neves, which eventually become our water sources, providing that precious resource which we all require to survive. I am not tangata whenua, but having had the privilege of visiting our special high places, I agree that there is something inherently special and spiritual about them, and that I too want to protect and hold them in the highest esteem. For me, this means that we should be containing and removing all of our waste, just the same as we take all of our rubbish with us. The current hut toilet situation achieves this, but does leave it on the mountain until the next drum change. Surely there is a better way.

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I often wonder when we became so privileged that waste was somehow exempt from our climbing ethos of being self-sufficient. As a climber, I have always prided myself on my ability to rely on my own abilities to get myself places, to look after myself and to leave no trace behind me. How is it that while we promote our own self-sufficiency, we also expect to be able to leave our human waste behind either for someone else to deal with in a hut toilet, or worse still, as part of a landscape where it won’t break down. To be clear, I am referring to alpine landscapes here, not bush settings where the considerations are quite different. During our project we discovered that many people were significantly disgusted by even considering options of carrying out human waste. I myself don’t have this issue, but on reflection I wonder if it is all the nights I have spent scrubbing reusable cloth nappies for my daughter? I have also spent significant amounts of time travelling and understand that our first world septic solutions are simply not available to everyone. This is something I wonder if others have considered.

This was reinforced by a conversation with a DOC ranger on the West Coast. We were talking about composting and long-drop toilets and he said that most of the front country accessible toilets had now been switched to septic flush systems, as people wouldn’t stand the smell that came from containment drums. In fact, in actively avoiding the smell they were choosing to defecate and make a mess adjacent to or behind the toilet itself. 

Another enlightening conversation was had with perennial toilet improvement advocate and long-time Club volunteer, John Cocks. He challenged us to think of human waste not as waste at all, but as an unused resource. Of course, we have used animal waste as compost and fertiliser for many years, both with success and problems. He challenged us to reframe the problem from how to dispose of waste, to how to create a circular economy for an unused resource. Further investigation into this idea shows that human solid waste has been successfully turned into compost, and there are now a number of countries looking at nutrient capture from urine. In fact, in France they are about to build two large facilities to capture phosphorous (a key non-renewable component of fertilizers) from urine produced at music festivals and other large-scale events to be reused into agriculture ². Could our toilet waste actually be an important resource waiting to be utilised? And would this reframing help people to take more personal responsibility for their waste impact?

So what is the solution? The nitty gritty icky stuff.

Throughout my years discussing this problem, there has always been a focus on solid waste. Humans produce between 1.6–2L of waste a day, and up to 90% of that is urine. For some reason, I have always ignored this fact and assumed that discharge to ground would be an acceptable solution for this. However, during my journey understanding more about tikanga Maōri, and even doing my own thinking on the matter, I now realise that this was a big assumption that I did not question. Although I understand that urine is sterile, and it would make up a miniscule amount of the water in the glacial fed river, it still sits uneasily that I might assume urine and nutrient discharge in these areas would be ok. Following the calculations above, urine also makes up 90% of the drum waste and weight. If we could reduce the urine load, we could improve our impacts.

As a climber and tramper, I can’t imagine people agreeing to carry out their urine, although there are products available to assist with this. Our research interviews confirmed this. However, I do imagine it is feasible to carry urine back to a hut where you might be staying. Using a urine diverting toilet to ensure that the urine remains in a state not contaminated by faeces, and utilising small containers being sent out on helicopter back-flights, may be a solution worth trialling. At least it would use existing capacity on back-flights rather than specific drum-emptying flights. 

While conducting research I had conversations with a product designer at DOC who provided insight into the opportunities of a high alpine site. The solar energy in these places is immense on a clear day, the huts generally sit on sites with fall and could therefore utilise rising hot air, and these huts aren’t used all year round. Generally, the load on the toilet facilities is for a short season and in relatively good weather. I don’t know anyone who purposely heads to the West Coast neves to sit out a week long storm! These properties of physics seem to offer opportunities for designing simple dehydration systems for urine, and although I am sure there are many barriers including the extreme cold, it may be an avenue of exploration for the future.

This doesn’t solve the solid waste issue. Both faeces and menstrual waste, along with the associated paper products are currently captured in the full containment drum. There are solutions for carrying these types of waste out—from the simple poo pot and cornstarch bag sold by the NZAC, to more sophisticated chemical solutions sold by Aoraki Solutions and others. A good sturdy dry bag and cornstarch bags is another excellent option. However, whichever carry-out system you decide to use will come with problems from sourcing to disposal. Firstly, you must be organised enough to order or buy a solution well ahead of time and it doesn’t occur to most people. We organise how we will pack our food in, but not how that ‘food’ leaves the mountains. Secondly, where you actually do your ‘doo doo’ while at a hut is difficult with carry-out systems. It is preferable to be sheltered, so the toilet shed is the natural place. But have you ever tried to secure a cornstarch bag over a toilet seat with a containment drum underneath? It is not easy. Thirdly, the chemical gel systems, while eliminating smell and spillage, must go straight to landfill. Even the cornstarch bags don’t break down well and while some people are disposing of them in long-drops, it is likely many also go to landfill. And that is if your council will even accept them in the red bin. Menstrual waste captured in tampons and pads should be brought down from the mountains and disposed of in red bins, but much of it isn’t and ends up in the containment drums, causing problems when these drums are pumped into the settling ponds at Fox Glacier. Newer products such as menstrual cups are making dealing with this waste easier, as it reduces the amount of non-degradable waste to be disposed of. For a full carry-out system though, it creates similar challenges to carrying faeces.

The conclusion of our project was that this is a complex area that warrants continued investigation and thinking. It is a topic where there is sustained interest and there are real opportunities for improvement, with the NZAC taking a lead where the Department of Conservation does not seem able. As you will see from other articles in this issue, there is a lot of work happening in this space and I can’t wait to see where it gets to. Let’s hope that in the future I will be able to talk a little less about hut toilets, and a little more about the innovative improvements that the Club is making in waste management in the alpine environment.

Acknowledgements: This work was part of a group project undertaken by the author, Ning He, Kayla O’Brien, and Nadine Archibold, who threw themselves into the depths of alpine waste management with commitment and enthusiasm—thanks team! Thanks also to the many people who generously gifted us their time giving information, advice and interviews.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, not necessarily the NZAC.