The idea of living out of a mobile vehicle, larger than those purely designed for transportation but small enough to operate on the infrastructure made for them, dates back to… well, it’s kind of hard to tell. Maybe it was the Romani people starting in the 12th century or so, or maybe it was the hippies in the 1960s, or any of the non-seasonally nomadic peoples in between. Who knows? From the advent of the internal combustion engine, the concept of “what if this was big enough to live in it, sort of” evolved right alongside more conventional uses of cars and trucks. This strain of enthusiast—in contrast to those for whom living in a vehicle is the only financial option—has continually strived to get more and more utility out of the small space offered by a car, van, or other moving vehicle. Yet there is a fundamental math problem at play.

Most people sleep one time per day. According to many studies, though, the “mean stool frequency” of those with healthy bowel habits is more than 8.6 per week. In other words, you probably poop more frequently than you sleep. Yet it’s the bed, not the toilet, which is a universal requirement for #vanlife.

Those who live, whether temporarily or permanently, in vans are industrious, creative sorts. For vanlifers, who differ from simply “those who live in a van” primarily by having the privilege of time and money to create something lovely, the problem of pooping can not be overlooked. Katie and Ben Zweber, travel bloggers under the name Two Wandering Soles who have lived in vans for many years, have, over the course of three different van builds and many rented van trips abroad, seen the full spectrum of bathroom options. “I personally wouldn’t build another van without a composting toilet,” says Katie. “It’s just been a game changer.” But there are pros and cons to every toilet possibility—including no toilet at all.

No Toilet Options

The Zwebers’ first van had no bathroom. The availability of public bathrooms is hardly ever adequate; private chains like Starbucks and McDonalds have become de facto public restrooms, which is not something those companies especially like. Even, paradoxically, in cities, which because they are full of people are also full of toilets, it can be punishingly difficult to find a bathroom.

“For one summer, we were living in a van and I was pregnant,” says Katie. “I was like, I need showers regularly, I’m not going to have to go into the woods and find a spot to shower. So we did have a Planet Fitness membership.” Planet Fitness has become the vanlifer’s bathroom of choice; the fitness club has over 2,500 locations throughout the United States, Canada, a few countries in Latin America and Australia. The combination of so many locations, plus the very cheap membership fees—as low as $10 per month—make it an easy choice for bathrooms and, an even more precious utility, showers. (For reference, that’s around what a truck stop shower costs per use, and Planet Fitness also offers a gym, unlike most truck stops.)

But Planet Fitness, despite all its locations, still tends to cluster around population centers, for obvious reasons: that’s where gym goers live. Planet Fitness, or other gyms, are great for urban and suburban areas, but that’s not necessarily where vanlifers want to be. “It's not super helpful when you’re wanting to really be immersed in nature, or if you did a really big hike and you’re coming off of a trailhead and feeling gross,” says Katie.

Somewhat surprisingly, during the period when the Zwebers had no bathroom in their van, they found that it was much easier to find a toilet out in the wilderness. Most large parks have some kind of bathroom that’s actually meant for the public, rather than customers, to use.

The Zwebers are serious about leave-no-trace as an ethos, and follow best practices for pooping outside. Human waste is an oddly dangerous product; old methods, like the cat hole (which is just a small hole into which one poops, covered up with dirt) are considered not only unsanitary but ineffective and potentially a significant contaminant. Instead, the US Forest Service and others recommend waste kits specially designed for human waste—basically, dog poop bags. You carried your poop in with you (technically, in you). Carry it out.

Barely a Toilet

Emergency toilets (a category in which we are including “camping toilets,” “portable toilets,” and “folding toilets”) are a slightly more elaborate version of using a waste kit; essentially, they just provide a seat that integrates a waste bag for a more traditional toilet experience. These come in a few different forms; in a van, a folding toilet makes the most sense, as they take up the smallest possible amount of space. Some fold up into a contraption that looks like a floating, lonely toilet seat; others look like a bucket (mostly because they are buckets).

There are actually plenty of benefits to this category of toilet. They’re extremely affordable, often as low as $20 or $30. They can fold into very very tight spaces, negating the need for a permanent bathroom setup in a van. And they can be quite environmentally friendly, as long as the poop is disposed of properly.

The downsides, though, are pretty obvious. If you haven’t dedicated a special poop space in your van, you’ll have to set up the emergency toilet either within the van—awkward if there’s someone else there—or nearby, which can be tricky in situations with other people around. You also have to manually dispose of your bag of poop, which ideally you wouldn’t keep in the van any longer than absolutely necessary. Good waste kits come with deodorizing agents and other ways to avoid smells, and actually can be used multiple times, but are still not designed to remain in a small living space for very long.

The nice thing about good waste kits, especially WAG bags, is that they’re designed to be disposed of in a regular garbage can. They aren’t suitable for pit toilets or composting situations, but garbage cans are fairly easy to find. But always make sure to pack these out; do not bury them.

Cassette Toilet

The cassette toilet is a type of portable toilet most common in RVs, but also often found in some van builds. It differs from a permanent, home-bound toilet in that it isn’t hooked up to a larger water source, but instead relies on a tank for water and another tank for waste. The water tank enables it to be used basically like any permanent toilet; it flushes and everything. The waste tank, which is either mounted underneath the vehicle (more common in RVs) or is the lower part of the toilet itself, can be removed and emptied. “You’d take that into a dump station and empty it that way,” says Ben. This is more low-tech than it sounds; you basically have a container of poop and you have to pour it into a toilet or other depository. Some versions have a pressurized feature to force the poop out more easily.

One issue with the cassette toilet is that there’s nothing inherent in the system that would promote the breakdown of waste or, really, to prevent odor. So it’s pretty standard for those with cassette toilets to either not use them for poop at all, or to use various products to help mask odor and assist in decomposition. Not all of those products are safe for septic systems or other delicate waste disposal situations; if you use a cassette toilet, you’ll want to look for formaldehyde-free options that rely instead on enzymes.

A benefit to cassette toilets is that, well, they’re kind of just sturdier, nicer emergency toilets. That means that they’re portable and easy to move, so many can be kept stowed away when not in use. It also means that they’re fairly inexpensive, typically in the $75 to $200 range.

Composting Toilet

When the Zwebers attempted their latest van build, a pretty elaborate one (“quite a bit more bougie than our first builds,” says Katie), they opted for the King of Van Poop Hardware: the composting toilet. “We had never really used a ton of composting toilets, so we were nervous that it would smell or be inconvenient, but it has been wonderful,” says Katie. At their core, composting toilets are designed to treat waste, to turn it into something that’s less smelly and easier to dispose of.

Most modern composting toilets will separate liquid from solid waste. Liquid waste usually goes into a tank, which actually needs to be emptied more frequently than the solid waste. The solid waste, on the other hand, goes into a container which is filled with some kind of substrate; most users today like coconut coir, which is cheap, widely available, and made of a waste product itself. (Peat moss is another option, but we strongly recommend against using peat, which is unsustainable and very environmentally harmful to harvest.) In much the same way as any other composting system, whether it’s for food waste or yard waste, human waste is then broken down.

These vary in some features and thus in price; some are essentially litter boxes, right down to recommending that you use actual litter, and are thus only a few hundred dollars. The Zwebers use a Nature’s Head, which they referred to as the “Rolls-Royce of composting toilets.” It includes an exhaust fan to blow out any odor and assist with the composting process as well as a crank to mix and speed up desiccation. The Zwebers really gushed about this one, noting that it emits no smell at all, uses very little power, and allows for long periods of use without having to empty it. The Zwebers, along with many other reviewers, say the Nature’s Head only needs to have its solid waste changed once a month, maybe even every other month. (The liquid does have to be dumped every couple of days, though.)

The main drawback of the Nature’s Head and other premium composting toilets is cost and size. These are often heavy, not really portable, and require their own dedicated space—a major concession in a van. While you can get more portable litter-box-type systems for fairly low prices, the primo options can cost about a thousand dollars and require some minor installation, like cutting a vent hole in the side of a van. These are for the very serious vanlifers, not weekend campers.

Wilder Options

There are a couple of other up-and-coming innovations in the mobile toilet scene, though none are especially easy to recommend. A company called Laveo makes a “dry flush toilet,” which is a take on an emergency toilet, though they certainly would disagree. Instead of a plain old waste bag, it has a gigantic shiny silver bag with a motorized mechanism that twists off each usage, creating a sort of poop sausage. It is wildly expensive, at around $900, and requires the purchase of proprietary poop sausage casings/bags.

There are also incinerating toilets, which use electricity or propane to blast waste into ash. These are pretty intense; they cost several thousand dollars, require vents, propane hookups or quite a bit of electricity, can only be used with liners that can actually incinerate liquid waste, and take about half an hour to fully incinerate waste. They probably make the most sense in remote research stations where pack in/pack out isn’t really an option; they certainly can be used in vans, but they don’t seem especially well suited for it.

Pooping in a van doesn’t have to be as ridiculous as that sounds; it can be environmentally friendly, even elegant. (The Zwebers have actual tile in their restroom.) Or you can poop in a litter box (like a cat) or in a doggie bag (like a dog, only more directly). The choice is yours!

Illustration by Justyna Stasik

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