When everything goes south, we will need to deal with the “unpleasantries of life”, such as dealing with human waste disposal (or to put it less delicately, dealing with shit when the shit hits the fan). But what about those other “wastes” we must dispose of? What will happen to all the things we throw away every day, expecting them to simply disappear, never to give another thought?
How long will you be able to remain in YOUR environment when there is no trash removal around you? I’m thinking of the 1975 “emergency” in Great Britain, during which the local government went “belly up” because they could not pay the salaries of city employees, including garbage/trash removal workers. It literally piled high in the streets. We’ve seen that in a few American cities on occasion, as well.
Even if you have emergency plans in place, even if you can burn your own trash, and really are so good at repurposing, so good at “living green” and “simply” you have little trash or refuse, how will you survive living in a world surrounded with hills (or, even mountains) of trash, debris, and garbage that will increase by the day all around you? The disease potential? The rodents, snakes, bugs, etc.? How will you manage in that scenario?
Or, is this just more reason to be ready to “Bug Out”, rather than “Bug In”?
Yes, you could stay and hope it gets better before it kills you breathing what’s “out there”. Many people may have no choice. But if you have the option of a bug out property, far away from the crowds, then, my advice would be waste no time getting there as soon as it is evident that “IHTF” (“It” Hit the Fan!). Don’t delay; don’t debate; don’t gamble; get out of Dodge! If it gets better, you can return. No harm done. But get out while the gettin’ is good!
O.K., but, what if you don’t have a bug out shelter to run to? There are some proactive steps you can take now; some of them involve other people, and you cannot control other people, their attitudes, or their actions (or lack thereof). But you can try to influence them for the better.
The Old Steel Drum Garbage Burner
Start teaching people NOW about disposing of trash, garbage, etc., when there is no alternative – the city is NOT going to pick it up for you and simply make it “disappear”.
One of the things we have done is buy a metal trash barrel (an old storage barrel). DH had to cut the top out of ours; we dug a small, level hole in the ground, just a few inches, for safety. We bought three (3) concrete blocks and set them in a triangle; we punched holes in the bottom edges of the barrel, just a few all around, about ten (10) inches from the bottom rim of the barrel. Fire must have oxygen to burn efficiently. We bought a fireplace screen in a second hand store for a top cover, to keep burning debris from “floating out” on the wind, setting fire to the neighborhood (and this can happen easily).
We have this same arrangement on our BOL and do use it to burn what little trash we generate, although we re-purpose and reuse everything as often and as many times as possible.
Composting
Composting is the best way I know to reduce your garbage/waste footprint. The only things you can’t really compost are meats and foods that contain meats – hopefully, you’re not wasting meats – they’re much too expensive and a tragedy to think that living things died not for food, but to be “wasted”.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a carnivore – but no animal or living thing should die because I’m wasteful of God’s creation, over which I have been made a steward. That is just not good stewardship, IMHO.
But, just about anything else, can be composted: peelings, egg shells that have been boiled (not raw); paper, etc. This is making soil, folks; once you learn the simple techniques of making compost (making your own rich, fertile soil) you will never lack for gardening materials, and you will significantly reduce your “waste”, and thus, your garbage/waste footprint.
In addition to composting, many fruit and vegetable “scraps”, such as lettuces and celery can actually be regrown to produce food more quickly
Cleaning Supplies
In a disaster, Walmart may not be open to sell you cleaning supplies; even if they are “open” you may not be able to get them, or, you may find yourself fighting for your life for a bottle of bleach, etc.
Why put yourself in that situation?
Get what you need NOW and stay stocked up; liquid bleach does not stay “good” for more than a few months, even stored under ideal conditions. Get Leslie’s Pool Shock, 73% calcium hypochlorite solution; a one lb. bag costs about $5.00 U.S., and will last a very long time. Try to get more than one; however, as it is small, stores easily and forever, and makes a great barter item.
A FEW GRAINS (note emphasis) of this in a gallon of water will do wonders to shock it (after filtering, if there’s stuff in the water requiring filtering) and make it potable. A few more grains in the same water produces bleach on demand.
Also, white vinegar is actually said to be more useful as an antibacterial, ounce-for-ounce, than even bleach and it won’t ruin your clothes. It will, however, kill everything you throw it on, just like bleach, so, don’t throw it out on grass or growing things you don’t want to kill. White vinegar is cheap in large bottles at your local warehouse club.
Homemade Laundry Detergent
Here is my personal favorite “recipe” for homemade laundry detergent, which you can use for washing off grid, and is also more natural and much less expensive than what you can buy “ready-made.” It works just as well for washing dishes, cleaning house, etc., as it does for laundry, so you don’t need a lot of cleaners.
Get a blue (non-food-grade) plastic bucket and lid from Lowe’s to keep it in. This will fill the bucket a little better than half full, and lasts for months.
Ingredients:
- One four pound twelve ounce box of Borax {Found in Laundry Isle }
- Six (6) bars of Kirk’s Castile soap {Found in bar soaps @ Wal-mart – bottom shelf} – harden these bars off for 3 weeks before making, by removing from paper and allowing to “air dry” on a rack, turning occasionally; it’s much easier to flake like this; when dry; flake by hand, just using a grater (very easy!).
- one four pound box of arm & hammer baking soda {Laundry Isle}
- one box of arm & hammer super washing soda {laundry Isle}
- Bucket of Oxy Clean (laundry isle} – this is optional, but I personally do like to add it. Omitting it will reduce cost, however. I use the “Sun” brand, which works just fine and is much cheaper than OC.
Plastic bags will not be available later; stock up on them now. Plastic bags won’t be a great solution for things you will burn, but can be used for that which cannot be burned and will hold things at bay a little longer than, say, a paper bag.
Disposable Paper Plates and Towels
Disposable PAPER plates, bowls, etc. will be helpful, but try not to rely too much on them; it would be better to heat water outdoors and wash dishes daily than add to the mounds. If you’re burning, paper plates burn well enough. Please DO NOT buy Styrofoam unless there is no other choice – Styrofoam is petroleum based, it is not earth friendly and it takes forever to break down.
Really though, just wash your dishes. What else will you have to do?
You’ll need paper towels; you won’t be able to get these later, either. Hand wipes, especially sanitizing, will have a useful place, but don’t rely too heavily on them; like Styrofoam, this stuff doesn’t break down well or quickly, although it will burn.
Extra garbage cans may or may not help, depending on how widespread the problem and the duration; but having extras around can do no harm, either – so buy them while you can, if it’s in the budget.
Breathing Mask
Breathing will be a problem, especially for those who already are “airways challenged”; if you don’t have asthma or breathing issues yet, you probably will by the time we get to this place, and, yes, it could very easily happen. You could stock up now on breathing apparatus such as masks, but do keep in mind most of these need replacement filters, as filters have limited life.
You can also make a simple mask by putting two inexpensive face masks together with a layer of activated charcoal between them and a thin layer of plastic to hold the charcoal in place. Activated charcoal is something that should be in your arsenal as poison control, water filtering, and any number of other uses.
Now you have another one. “Instructables” posts a how-to for a gas mask using an empty fruit can and plastic tubing; there are a plethora of posts at youtube on using just the cheap masks and charcoal, as mentioned. Spend a few minutes coming up with whatever works for you, but, have the instructions, have the knowledge, have everything you need and be ready to use it BEFORE IHTF. It may save you much suffering later.
Make sure you have as much med as possible available if you are asthmatic, etc. Be ready.
Do you have a supply of mouse traps? Bug treatments? All of these things will be both needed and unavailable when IHTF. I buy wooden mouse traps and throw them away, mouse and all – I refuse to handle the little nasties, and, at a quarter a trap (discount stores), at this point, I don’t care. Maybe someday I will, but, not today.
Backup Power
If you have enough money, look into an in-house recirculating system; this is better than bringing contaminated air into your home. This also assumes you will have power to run it; do you have a backup system? A generator you can run? Solar system? Now we’re talking real money, but, hey! If you have it, spend it. If nothing else, as long as you still have power, run your a/c system – this will recirculate air.
Do you have a good shovel for digging and burying if you have no other choice? A couple bags of hydrated lime for your local farm store for handling odors on those things you must bury?
Please DO teach your neighbors, friends, church family, school family, anyone and everyone who will listen that all of you WILL need a Plan B for your trash, garbage, and refuse when bad stuff happens; now is the time is to “be prepared”. The more people you can get to plan ahead for system failures, the better off you will all be when IHTF.
Personal cleanliness, as much as possible, anyway, will never be more important than it will be in this scenario. Are you prepared?
Great information Servantheart. My sister and brother in law which own a small farm in Idaho still burn their garbage. Once a month they pay someone to come by and pick up what didn’t get burned up in the barrels. In a SHTF we will need to have a plan to dispose of this also. Burying it may be a possibility using lime will help to break it down but this takes time and space. All good information to consider. Thank you again for a well thought-out article.
Bless you, Suni!
Several things came to my mind as I read this. Much of the spread of the Bubonic Plague was attributed to rodents. Some time ago the garbage collectors in New York City went on strike and they had a severe increase in the rat population during that time. You can burn a ton of stuff but you can’t burn metal. We have bears around us so to avoid drawing them in, whenever I use something from a can I rinse the can before I smash it and put it in the trash can destined for the dump. By smashing all cans, not just flimsy aluminum, you can get a lot more in the trash can or bag. If you live in a neighborhood with a home owners association or some other means of meeting and making group decisions, you could probably get everyone to cooperate on this topic and make the next suburb more attractive for disease vectors. It seems to me that the greatest concern in a heavily populated area would be ‘disposable’ diapers (there’s a milk steer for you).
As a whole, we have become totally ignorant of the health dangers of poor sanitation, taking this modern infrastructure for granted even more than electricity.
What we do with what come out is every bit as important as what we put in. You have provided excellent suggestions and it’s a topic that needs to be discussed on a regular basis.
Hi, Pam! As always, you add a bit of wisdom to the topic at hand.
As to the neighborhood association “cooperating”, not here, I’m afraid. We have never lived in a Neighborhood Association community before, and we surely do not recommend it to anyone. We have the NA from hell, IMHO! A “president” who is more interested in power than people and rules than humanity – a lawyer; ’nuff said. It’s a very small group, so, no one else apparently wants the “job”, not that it it amounts to much. I don’t even attend the meetings, and that’s another story. I want nothing to do with any of them. We have lost no less than three wonderful neighbors because of the way our NA treated them. Sad, but true. We just do what we want within the confines of a six foot privacy fence, tell them all, “No Trespassing”, and take the rest to the BOL, where the only rules are the ones you want! Yes, I know…not everyone has a BOL, but everyone needs one, if you have to live with a Neighborhood Association, IMHO! Definitely not a fan of any living arrangement involving a Homeowners or Neighborhood Association, which has nothing to do with Covenants and Restrictions, which we also have.
Speaking of C and R’s, most people don’t know this, but if you have Covenants and Restrictions and your property is not paid for – check your mortgage. It’s highly likely there is language in there that says if you fail to keep the Covenants and Restrictions, your mortgage lender has the right to call your note!
Boy howdy, Servantheart, I hear you loud and clear. I’m just not in tune with somebody telling me what color to paint my house, how many trees I can (or have to) have in my yard, what number of vehicles in the driveway for what period of time, no chickens, one dog, a cat ONLY with a prescription from an MD for a “companion”. It’s a control issue! BUT …
Some folks are already locked in without the option to bug-out. Therefore, the time will come for “survival of the cooperative” and cooperating on the level of waste disposal will literally be life – or death from hideous disease.
We have long cut the bottoms from the cans and wahed them to remove the odors and then flattened them. Since I plan on staying in place I will be digging a long, narrow deep trench which I will camouflage and placing the nonburnable therein covering each layer with dirt. I compost what I can and Burnables are consumed in an incinerator of my own design which is powered by propane and the exhaust gasses are passed through a double loop and fed back into the burner. No odor or smoke and it takes around ten minutes to accomplish a five gallon bucket of packed burnables. The plastics are recycled for now but if that shuts down, I will shred the water and milk jugs and bury them in the trench. I will dissolve the grocery bags with controlled heat. Hardest part will be concealing the burying trench. Harold
Now why doesn’t it surprise any of us that YOU would design and build an incinerator with double combustion? Dude, you’re a genius!
It came about years ago while living in LA county. We had city pickup but after moving to the high desert, the local service wanted paid six months in advance. Naturally, I said no and for some time I hauled my own to the landfill. They changed hands and got a little sticky about private dumpers who did not utilize their service. Someone dropped off an old water heater out back one day and when the covering was peeled off it had an intact tank. Since It already had an integral gas burner element, I just removed the controls and piped it direct through an adjustable shut off valve to control valve. With the tank shortened and the top retained with a two inch band welded to it so it would mate up and seal with the bottom unit, a double coil of one inch copper tubing was wrapped around the tank with a flare nut to disconnect it from the top and the other end flattened slightly to increase output pressure and fed directly into the burner element. Took a while to arrive at the proper flame setting and duration of burn. Metal flattened cans were deposited in a trench as described since we had a small ranchette of 1-3/4 acres. Present one which I hope never to have to use is just slightly smaller from a smaller water heater.
Would you please post a picture or two of your setup?
Harold, once again, I’m in awe! There seems to be no end to your intelligent genius. There are such people who are geniuses but to the point they have no wisdom and no common sense; you are definitely not one of those. You are a genius, an inventor, full of wisdom and common sense. A rare combination, indeed. Oh, to be able to visit you “anytime” and tap into your reservoir of genius.
This would make an EXCELLENT post here, Harold – how to build your DIY incinerator system. Just sayin’….
Hope you are doing well. Blessings,
When we lived in the country we didn’t use much plastic other than plastic bags for the freezer and then they were made of thicker plastic and we reused them several times. We also didn’t use many tins and those that we did often came to be used for other things after we washed them out eg measuring cans for animal feed, etc. Twice a year we would take a trip to the dump to drop off what we couldn’t recycle. However much of that material had previously been dug into the ground by occupants of the land before us – and dug up as we put up new buildings or dug the garden. So I would suggest that post collapse there would only be rubbish needing to be disposed of in the early stages. After that there would be very little.
Disposable diapers won’t be a problem – there won’t be any new ones to dispose of! Mothers will have to go back to the old ways. Back in my mother’s generation before washing machines babies and their mothers were often potty trained at 6 months. After washing machines came in it was believed that children couldn’t do it until 21-24 months. Now that we have disposables children are often not trained till between 3 and 4 years. It makes you think. Come to thtink of it having 3 dozen old style square diapers with heavy safety pins might be a useful stock to have if one has young women in the family.
“Disposable diapers won’t be a problem – there won’t be any new ones to dispose of!” – Good point! And in a totally weird way, something to look forward to.
My daughter and many of her friends use cloth diapers now, they are eco-friendly but just as important – it’s cheaper. It’s no big deal to her as I used cloth and she was old enough to help out and change her baby brother sometimes.
Hey, Harriet! I like your idea of the big safety pins as a prep item – I’m thinking you are right; great barter tool. Thanks!
Washing dishes burns up your most valuable commodity, WATER, without it you cannot survive. If your water supply fails because the city water stops flowing, or your power is out and you cannot get water from your well, the trouble begins. Paper plates and bowls, along with plastic silverware may be the best alternative to dehydration. Paper products are great fire starters to start your cooking fire, it burns well in a charcoal chimney as it will for a log fire starter. You son’t starve for weeks, you will dehydrate in days.
Hey, Curt! Your point is correct on the water if we are discussing people who have done nothing to prepare for a long-term IHTF scenario, which will be the majority of humanity, as we all know. But for those of us here, we’re discussing ways to be ready. Water was not the topic at hand, but, yes, you’d better have a lot of water in storage post IHTF (“It”) or that will be your # 1 problem, and you can forget about having water with which to wash dishes, or anything else.
What I hear you saying is that water will be just too precious a commodity at that point in the game to “waste” it washing dishes and there is truth in that, especially for the unprepared.
It would be better, IF you have ample water (you are a prepper – you DO have ample water supply, from more than one source, right?!), to wash dishes than stack mounds of STYROFOAM waste about. Paper that biodegrades or burns is another issue, as pointed out. I mention this because styrofoam is usually cheaper than paper, so, that’s what people grab – with no thought to what happens to it “afterward”, nor do they care, because all they have to do is throw it in the trash and it will magically disappear, right?
That same dishwater can be used for flushing toilets or washing down emergency refuse systems, and any number of other uses, especially if you use natural “detergents”; it can be used to water gardens if that’s the case. It can be filtered, treated, and recycled as “potable”, if necessary.
But you are absolutely right – disposable PAPER products will be your only hope if you have not stored sufficient water or if you rely on a well system that is purely power driven; but if you have not stored sufficient water or can’t get it out of the ground, you probably won’t have too worry about what to eat off for very long, as you also pointed out.
Of course, here’s another thought for those who will be “bugging in”, when IHTF: your neighbors are all getting desperate, they are slowly morphing into “zombies”, but they see mounds of trash building up around your place, or fire coming from “somewhere”; that means someone is not only surviving, but seems to be doing pretty well at it; don’t you think they’ll be paying a visit? Yep, I’m pretty sure they will.
Harold’s DIY smokeless incinerator system would make it so much easier to hide what you have from the zombies that ARE coming…or even just trench burying, as he is doing…the less visible, the better.
I have had an idea just this week to use up those pet food cans. I will be making them into gutters to collect rain. I have 5 out buildings that don’t have any gutters and no spare money either but we are throwing out 3 cans a day.
When I have guttered the out buildings I will put them together on my fences on my allotment to collect rain water.
I believe the idea could be used to collect rain from tents too when someone’s house has been damaged.
The flattening mentioned above first, then slotted together and then nailed to a piece of wood and then curved into a gutter shape.
Or using tin snips, cut one side and then do the above. I’m not sure yet but I will be making a gutter soon.
What a great idea, Angela! And a super re-purpose! Please let us know how it works out…keep us posted.