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Comment by a3n | Hacker News Reader

> So you're in your van, parked at the beach, or a beautiful park and you gotta poop - what now?

Well, if you're "parked," there's a good chance that there are restrooms.

You can carry a portable toilet. Or a bucket and kitchen trash bags. I'm an over the road trucker, and in an "emergency" I have just closed the curtains, squatted down in the back and pooped into a 13 gal kitchen trash bag. Not at all comfortable, but workable in an emergency.

Store the bag outside in the spare tire, until I get to a suitable dumpster/trash can. (And I doubt that my rare, once or twice a year "dump" compares at all to the daily disposal of diapers on the road and at home on garbage day.)

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Yeah so I've done the "shit in a bucket" thing. When I was towing an enclosed trailer I converted to a "camper", our only bathroom was a bucket (with a toilet seat). This is not sustainable! This works in a pinch, it does not, and should not work full time. Dumping your poo in a kitchen trash bag in dumpsters doesn't work if everyone, or even "a lot" of people are doing it. Towns and the townspeople do not want van dwellers dumping their shit bags in local trash cans.

I don’t think there is any danger of hordes of people starting to live in vans. Try not to let such concerns stress you out too much.

Condescending speculation.

No, frustrated reaction to irrational “what if everyone did this!!!???” concern trolling.

I read it as personal experience. There are such communities.

Depends where you live. I can most certainly attest to the rising popularity of "vanlife", and the associated downsides of long term unmanaged camping/squatting.

In my case there's a popular area for climbers on a fire road near a river close to me. Many of these folks just shit arbitrarily in the woods, and don't even bury it. It stinks, attracts animals, and makes it impossible to go on hikes. A friend's dog even ate some which had THC in it from someone who ate a marijuana edible. And let's not get started about the risk of forest fires in the dry season.

There are some that are better about managing their waste and overall footprint, but there is an outsized impact from the less considerate.

There are places where these concerns are real and are having actual and increasing impact. Dismissing these concerns is not helpful.

People living in vans/RV and disposing of their fecal matter and urine with unsafe methods is a big problem for many communities along the California coast from San Francisco to San Diego and also along corridors in Silicon Valley based on local news around Mountain View and San Jose. The temperatures are moderate 10 months of the year or more.

>Towns and the townspeople do not want van dwellers dumping their shit bags in local trash cans.

God forbid someone talks to them about what we do with dog and human baby shit.

Baby shit isn't typically dumped in street trash cans, and if it is it's one diaper, not several trash bags of adult shit.

I hate to break it to you, but having a baby means you are dumping 5 shitty diapers a day for first few months, then at least two a day for next six or 9 months. Yes lots of people go for reusable diapers, but lots is probably not more than 3% of parents in the US.....

> but having a baby means you are dumping 5 shitty diapers a day for first few months

There might be something wrong with your baby, or maybe you have babies? When I had my first child I naively thought they shit all the time (like all day - I was an idiot). In reality, they typically shit once a day (like us!), so maybe 5 total diapers, but not all are shit filled.

Site note: We used cloth diapers for both our children and urine (that's been sitting in a diaper pale) is by far worse than shit smell.

Have you considered the possibility that not all children have the same BM frequency? I have two children. They both pooped quite a bit more than once a day for several months after they were born.

Lucky you if you only had one shitty diaper per day, it’s absolutely normal to have many more than that in the first few months. Check with your local pediatrician about what normal is before you extrapolate from your own experience and start assuming there is something wrong with other babies that shit more often.

In reality, they typically shit once a day

I don't even have kids, and I know that's not true.

Source: might not be a parent, but I'm a hell of a babysitter.

But isn't that in your home trash can, with only a couple dumped into a restroom trash can at a restaurant or whatever? I think that's a different scale than showing up with a couple days worth of adult trash bag poos.

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