Mongolia... Rubbish!

The following quotes were posted by someone on Lonely PLanet's Thorn Tree message board relating to camping in Mongolia...

Carry out all non-biodegradable items and deposit them in rubbish bins in the nearest town. Make an effort to carry out rubbish left by others.

and

Never bury your rubbish. Digging disturbs soil and groundcover and encourages soil erosion. Buried rubbish will likely be dug up by animals who may be injured or poisoned by it. It may also take years to decompose.

Sorry, but the LP guide for Mongolia has this wrong, they obviously cut and pasted this section from another country... This is my take on what to do with your rubbish while camping and travelling around remote parts of Mongolia.

If you take your rubbish to a town/city in Mongolia it will get taken out to the town 'tip' and left to blow around the countryside (if it isn't just spread around by local dogs first...). There is almost no proper waste disposal (as Europeans/N Americans would know it) in all of Mongolia, including the main cities and the ger-camps. Smaller cities and towns do not have incinerators or proper land-fill sites and waste is trucked to an area just outside town and dumped on the surface. If you are lucky your ger-camp may have a burning-pit, otherwise they may just take stuff to dump in a out-of-sight creek-bed...

I do the following with rubbish when in the countryside in Mongolia:

Plastic bottles - squash them, store them in a bag and give them to kids in the towns on the main transport routes. They kids will get cash for these from truckers who collect them and take them to a larger city where there are people who buy then, consolidate a truck load and ship them to UB. Eventually they get taken to China for recycling.

Glass bottles - try to take to a city or town and leave them by a bin. Someone will collect them to sell-on to a company who will sell them to a recycler. Your driver will probably know which can and can’t be returned for reuse in UB.

Cans and tins - ditto as for glass but be aware the dogs will rip plastic bags apart to get at food remaining in tins and may cut themselves in the process - stamp tins flat to at least prevent the latter.

Food wastes (left-overs etc) - local dogs will find and eat these if you are within a couple of km of any gers so just leave stuff on the ground surface, away from any well or water and preferably not where someone else may camp. In the really remote areas something will usually eat anything left lying around. Dogs in Mongolia will even eat human excrement - especially that from well-fed traveler's bottom as it is more nutritious than the average food the poor animals get.

Excrement - not withstanding the above point it is better to bury your own poo.

Paper, plastic, anything else - burn it and then bury it. The first stage isn't essential if you are in a high fire-risk area or just don't want to draw attention to yourself.

Tom's guide to burying stuff (2-4 people after a night’s camp...)
-1(thought of last!) – don’t be messy in the first-place. Bag rubbish as it is produced to make it easier to clean up your campsite when you leave. Place bagged rubbish in a vehicle overnight or at least tied somewhere high on the vehicle so dogs visiting in darkness can’t spread it around.
0-find an area not used by anyone as a trail, camping area etc. If you camped in a popular area carry your waste with you and wait until later in the day.
1-find somewhere with a reasonable thickness of soil where erosion won't take place in the near future (not in sand, >200 m from wells and water, not in or near dry stream-beds)
2-use something to remove the top layer of soil (your jeep driver should have (but probably doesn't have) a shovel of some type), put to one side of the planned hole. If there are plants try to take of a 'slice' of top-soil containing the roots.
3-dig a hole at least a foot deep (30cm) putting the soil on the other side of the hole to the first soil taken out - this can be really difficult in hard ground in Mongolia so picking the right place as per step 1 really helps
4-put your rubbish in the hole
5-put the soil from step 3 back into the hole
6-put the soil from step 2 back into the hole - if you took a 'slice' of top-soil put it back the same way up.

If done correctly no-one will notice your pit even if standing right next to it. I’ll probably go down in flames for this from the ‘environmentalists’. Yes, maybe you left some stuff in the ground that will not decompose or may produce minor leachate but these things are only issues where they will significantly effect something, and I’d suggest that this is unlikely from the waste generated by a small group over a day or two. Dispersed and considerate burial is a much better option than taking rubbish to a local town where it will be spread around close to where people are living or dumped to blow around the countryside.

Much more damaging to the environment than burying a small amount of rubbish are drivers who just head across the steppe to see something, chase a fox etc. Wheel marks through vegetation can take years to disappear and encourage other drivers to also start crossing the same area. These wheel marks also trigger erosion much more than digging and filling a small pit (especially as local drivers sometimes like to show-off by heading straight up the steepest slope they can find within sight of your camp...). Make sure your driver doesn't drive around aimlessly and If you see a good campsite 100m from the track then try and get your driver to park-up near the track and carry your sleeping stuff over. If you can't be bothered to do this but get-upset about burying a minor bit of non-degradable rubbish then you are barking up the wrong tree...

Wow, that turned into quite a piece didn’t it! Must be withdrawal due to not writing for a while!

Other stuff I posted in connection with the message on this thread:

re poster#2 - right about tents needing a good flysheet that will cope with strong winds. Most tents available in UB are for 'sheltered campsites only' i.e. a nice pleasant garden back at home. I would take a '3-season' mountain tent as minimum strength due to the wind and the lack of shelter. My tent for the last four years in Mongolia has been a MSR Fury that is supposed to stand alpine storms in exposed sites, I've still been worried at times... Try to move campsites every day (you will if traveling anyway) but if you are staying in the same place a long time then move your tent every 2nd day (actually packing it away will prolong the life of your tent as it won't get damaged by strong UV at mid-day or if a storm comes in while you aren't at the campsite). Camping in prime grazing land is a bad idea due to increased animal poo and flies in the area (goats, cows, camels and horses can also destroy a tent rather amusingly in a matter of minutes).

Jumblina's point about not camping in driver river-beds is very good advice. A thunderstorm 20km away can flood a dry river within 30 minutes. I've seen flash floods totally change apparently small dry river channels in minutes in the Gobi.

Now I await the flaming…

T