James’ four (currently empty) pee bottle buddies.

Unused human waste bucket currently being employed to store our ice/snow cache to make drinking water.

We are all human. Even in the Antarctic. We eat, we drink, we expend lots of energy. But what of those functions we don’t typically mention? At home, with you, you likely have running water, flushing toilets, and sanitation. Here, we deal with ice, ice, and more ice. Making water is really only reserved for drinking and cooking. Leaving the tent is a significant endeavour. So how do we go about managing our daily bodily functions? Let’s start with loss of water. We are drinking all of the time, to keep fluids up in the nearly 0% humidity at 8,000′ on the Antarctic plateau. Much of this we lose through respiration and some loss through the skin. Some is excess, and we need to urinate. That’s where flags and bottles come in very handy. You see, a simple Nalgene bottle with a wide opening turns out to be your best friend (what about me, Scott, James!?!?!). Unlike Scott, I (James) can have four of these as my friends. But what do we use them for, and why are they our best friends? Well, let us give you an impression of the conditions here at the moment. It is constant daylight; that’s a good thing. It is cold, -20C, it is windy, 25-40 mph gusts, -70C windchill. Taking relief outside doesn’t sound appealing does it? Those Nalgenes have a name in McMurdo; in fact, they’re famous. They’re called “pee bottles”. We’ll leave it up to you to work out how we use them but you can begin to understand why we appreciate them so much. It is important to keep those bottles above freezing, especially at night. In the morning, or when they’re full, we take them outside and release them back to nature. We do this at a single spot signified by a red flag. The released contents freeze to form a mound. The evidence of our presence here will be gone with the next winter storm and we leave the Antarctic as we found it. What about solids? Obviously we eat, lots! We don’t count calories, and we do need energy. Inevitably, there’s waste. We can’t leave that waste, we have to take it back with us. So, we use a communal bucket. We put a seat on that bucket. And we put that bucket… in a tent. Inside that tent there are magazines and hand sanitizer. As James eluded to above, it is very dry out and this can lead to dry skin, especially on your hands. As a pro tip, prepare mentally for the sting of the hand sanitizer on your hands. If you let out a scream in pain/shock, the camp will think you’re being attacked by a Yeti or someone in the camp can use some “Cooking with James” lessons. As a final question, who on Earth reads those magazines? This tent is lovingly known as “the poo tent”. It is that third tent you see in the photographs (like the most-recent blog post view from our tent door). On the C-130, it was listed in the cargo system as “the science tent” – we’re not sure how much science goes on in there, but we do appreciate it. When the bucket is completely full, we hammer a lid onto it. It ultimately gets shipped back to the United States, and is incinerated. We are carrying close to a dozen buckets, let’s hope that’s enough!

Posted by James and Scott from Nødtvedt Nunatak on 2017-12-26 at 12:30 local.

Editor’s note:  The P bottles are often (but not always) those retired after last season’s drinking water use- some proportion of those in the best condition can be thoroughly sterilized and re-used as P bottles again.  In contrast the buckets are brand-new from the factory at the start of our season, and we do indeed use a few of them for gathering ice (they never get used for anything else beforehand). As noted here,  the buckets for human solid waste are hammered shut and transported back to McMurdo where they either enter the station’s sewage treatment plant or are shipped home and similarly treated.  The buckets are then cleaned and broken up for recycling as plastic.  And yes,  managing waste, particularly human waste,  is a challenging burden. As one of the longest-lived projects in Antarctica, we have evolved through all the stages since our earliest days (1976),  when open dumping was de rigueur and places frequently visited by humans could frankly be disgusting.  The changes are great for Antarctica’s environment,  but the logistical burden of flying human waste around poses its own environmental issues.  Those of you with marvelous solutions should contact USAP immediately!