Dig a latrine far from water

Put body waste in a covered pit downhill and far away from any water or food.

easy⏳ half a daytradition — not yet hand-tested

Body waste is the most dangerous thing a group of people produces. It is full of gut germs, and if it reaches your drinking water or your food — carried by rainwater, seeping soil, flies, or feet — the whole camp gets sick at once. A latrine is simply a pit that keeps waste in one covered place until the soil breaks it down.

Half a day of digging protects everyone for months. Do it on the first or second day in any place you'll stay more than a night.

You need

• A digging tool — a spade is best; a strong sharpened stick, a flat stone, or half a metal can will do, just slower.
• A spot downhill from your water — waste must never be able to wash or seep toward a well, spring, or the stretch of river you drink from. Water underground flows downhill too.
• Distance — at least 30 meters (about 30 long steps) from any water source, and at least 6 meters from where people sleep and cook. But keep it within about 50 steps of camp, or people will stop walking there.
• Logs or planks — to lay across the pit so people can squat safely.
• A lid — a flat board, bark slab, or flat stone to cover the hole between uses.
• A pile of dry soil or ash with a scoop — a handful thrown in after each use keeps smell and flies down.
• Something for privacy — a screen of branches, mats, or cloth. People only use a latrine they feel comfortable in.

Steps

1. Confirm the site: downhill from all drinking water, 30+ steps from it, 6+ steps from shelters, and not in a dip where rain collects or floods reach.
2. Dig the pit.
   • For a group staying weeks or months: about 1 meter across and 1.5 to 2 meters deep. Deeper lasts longer.
   • For a few nights only: a straddle trench — about 30 centimeters wide, 1 meter deep, 2 to 3 meters long. Squat over it, cover as you go along its length.
   • If water seeps into the bottom while digging, stop. You have hit groundwater — the water hiding under the soil. Fill this pit back in and dig elsewhere, higher up. The pit bottom should stay well above any water.
3. Pile the dug-out soil in a ring around the rim, packed down. This mound keeps rainwater from running into the pit.
4. Lay two strong logs or planks across the pit, a foot-width apart, leaving a slot in the middle to squat over. Test them with your full weight while holding something solid.
5. Make the lid and set it over the slot. Keep it on whenever the latrine is not in use — this is what stops flies.
6. Set the soil-or-ash pile and scoop beside the slot. The rule for everyone: use, then throw in one scoop, then put the lid back.
7. Build the privacy screen around it, leaving an entrance facing away from camp.
8. Put a hand-washing station within a few steps of the exit — water that pours, plus soap or ash. A latrine without hand-washing only does half the job.
9. Watch the level over the months. When the waste rises to within half a meter of the top, close the latrine: fill it completely with soil, mound it, mark it clearly, and dig a fresh pit at a new spot. Never dig up an old one.

Watch out

• Too close to water is the killer mistake. Germs travel sideways through wet soil, and 30 meters is not the distance where they stop — it is a rough, hard-won minimum that assumes ordinary soil and ordinary luck. In coarse gravel, or ground with cracked rock under it, filth travels far further and far faster. So 30 meters is the floor, never the answer: if in doubt, go farther, and go lower than every water source. The dig-a-well guide states the same rule from the other end.
• An open pit feeds flies. Flies land on waste, then land on food. The lid and the scoop of soil after each use are not optional.
• Children can fall in. Keep the squat slot narrow, the lid heavy enough that a toddler can't shift it, and small children accompanied.
• A flooded latrine spreads everything it holds. Never dig where water pools after rain. The soil mound around the rim is your rain wall — keep it packed.
• A latrine nobody uses protects nobody. If it stinks, is too far, or has no privacy, people will go in the bushes. Fix the reason instead of scolding.
• A full pit does not get "one more week." At half a meter from the top, close it and dig new. Overfull pits overflow in rain.

How it works

Soil is a slow, safe digester. Buried waste is broken down over months by soil life, and the germs in it die off away from people, water, and flies. The whole design is just three separations: waste from water (distance and downhill), waste from flies (lid and soil cover), and waste from hands (washing after). Keep all three and the gut-germ loop stays broken.