You'll love the way we climb & trek!                                                      

It is time to take action and the Kiliwarriors has taken on this challenge in 2005.

National Park Services have placed pit latrines at most of the camp sites. Unfortunately, the number of visitors  overwhelm these latrines at many camps.

Pit latrines (or long-drops) are wooden structures with squat holes. These structures don't have doors but are designed to provide a degree of privacy.

Climbers are not accustomed to squat holes. As a result, these latrines are often filthy with waste ending up on the floors instead of in the holes!

Most Western climbers are turned off by these dirty, foul-smelling, and ice-cold latrines. Under the cover of darkness, many find it easier to find privacy behind a rock or bush. The results are clearly visible along the popular trails and in the camping areas.

Pit latrines are designed for human waste - yet climbers use it as dumping stations for magazines, books, tampons, plastics, and even dirty clothes! Porters have been seen dumping kitchen garbage in these latrines.

Some latrines are in disrepair, putting more pressure on nearby latrines where lines of climbers and porters often form after dinner and in the early morning hours. Those in severe discomfort are forced to look for a bush or rock.

Along the trails, while trekking, clients are told to dig small holes when they need to go to the bathroom.  Some are told to take matches and burn the toilet paper! Bad idea! Many forest fires around the world started when hikers tried to burn waste! Besides, most climbers don't want to bother with this. They secretly bury the paper with the waste, then kick some dirt over it and move on. Imagine the mess when hundreds of climbers do the same thing every day of the year.  

To provide more comfort for their clients, many outfitters nowadays set up private toilets. These are mostly lightweight seating structures over shallow holes behind private canvas setups.  Another bad idea! Decomposition in alpine areas is extremely slow, worsening the impact of improperly disposed waste. Even an orange peel left behind will require many years to fully decompose.

Camp sites are showing the strains of "private" holes left behind by outfitters. Everywhere you look are little piles of dirt and many of the shallow holes often expose their unattractive secrets after rains.

With more climbers on Kilimanjaro every year, digging more latrine toilets cannot be the answer. What about the piles of waste (including plastic, junk, etc.) in the ground? At the higher elevations decomposition is extremely slow.

Buried waste will eventually enter the underground water reservoirs  and severely impact the ecosystems lower down the mountain.

Even with more pit latrines, climbers and porters will continue to search for privacy in nature. All it takes is one careless "deposit" on the latrine floor and that latrine is out of commission for everyone else.

The ultimate solution is for trekkers and porters to bag their feces and carry it back down with them! Is this what we will see on Kilimanjaro ten years from now (a hiker carrying out her own waste?)

Any comprehensive, acceptable solution has to be approved and enforced by Tanzania National Parks. This may take years and years. We cannot wait that long.

We decided to do something in 2005 - on a small scale in the hope that interest will grow and momentum will eventually cause all outfitters to adopt similar policies.

We hope that the climbing public will support our efforts and demand to see waste management policies from outfitters before signing up to climb with them. This is the only way to save the magical Kilimanjaro.

We already use Porta Potti™ toilets with holding tanks. In 2005, we are introducing the Clean-Mountain-Can technology to use in conjunction with our toilets. This is the first introduction of this technology on Kilimanjaro.

Is this the ultimate solution? Who knows. But it is a start. By tackling the problem instead of ignoring it we are gaining first-hand experience of what it takes to keep the mountain clean. We  are learning about the technology. We are learning about our porters and what they think about it. And we are learning about our clients and their reactions to possible solutions to this problem.