Where do you poo? What is the best portable toilet option for vanlife or RV living? Should I take a toilet camping? SO MANY QUESTIONS!! Well, hopefully we can get down to the dirty details and answer your questions in our article, “Toilet Talk: The Best Portable Toilet Options for Vanlife, Camping, or RV Living“
Does a bear shit in the woods? Yes. But, that doesn’t mean YOU have to. I mean, that is the whole point of getting a camper toilet, right?
Converting your van into a home-on-wheels means making yourself as comfortable as possible. Replicating the essential parts of a house, like the kitchen and bathroom, will make your transition to vanlife a smooth one as well as make going to the bathroom a smooth operation.
Everybody poops, sometimes even multiple times a day, so be prepared to deal with it. Proper planning prevents piss poor performance. Who wants to waste time on the road searching for facilities when you could be relaxing, lounging around your campervan and enjoying the sights outside your windows?
Of course, there is the environment to consider too. As vanlifers, our everyday efforts to minimize our impact on the earth and reduce the level of waste we produce matters. Luckily, there are many different bathroom setups available to suit every situation and budget, and we’ve picked out some favorites for the best portable toilet in each category.
Also, because cassette toilets are so commonly used, and there are so many, we did a seperate review of the best cassette toilets that you can find here:
Best Cassette Toilet | Portable Toilet Reviews
Best Portable Toilet Options (at a glance)
Best Cassette Toilet (Chemical Toilet)
Thetfort Porta Potti 365
Thetfort is the best known brand when it comes to cassette toilets, and for good reason.
Best Composting Toilet
Nature’s Head Composting Toilet
If you decide that you must absolutely have a composting toilet, than Nature’s Head is the leading brand, but it comes at a price.
Best Bucket Toilet
Best Alternative Way to Take a Dump
Use a public bathroom!
When in doubt, you can always squeeze one out in a public bathroom, or a really understanding friend’s house.
What We Will Cover
We will cover basic poo etiquette and why it is important to separate your 1’s from your 2’s. We will go over the best portable toilets (cassette, composting, and bucket toilets) as well as other toileting options. Maybe most importantly, we will go into the dirty details about how to dispose of your waste.
Use this table of contents to skip around, if you’re so inclined.
Table of Contents
Toilet Talk: An Easier Way to Pee
The best way to extend the life of your camper or RV toilet might be to separate the liquids (which are easily discarded) from the solids (which are not).
Go outside and write your name in the snow or water the flowers when nature calls. Or, if that is impossible, use a wide mouthed vessel with a tightly sealed lid.
This doesn’t just go for men. Women can purchase a she-wee, or a similar female urinal product. They are cheap, comfortable, easy to use and can provide a certain amount of ease-of-mind in an emergency. Perfect for stealth camping in the city or driveway surfing in suburbia.
Best Female Urinals
Sunany’s Female Urinal
The most common female urinal “design” made out of a collapsible silicone material allowing you to pee while standing up.
The Tinkle Belle Female Urinal
This design is partly rigid which allows women to not only pee while standing up, but also while fully clothed.
The She Wee Female Urinal
The she-wee is a fully rigid design which, again, allows women to pee while standing and fully clothed.
Empty your collected urine regularly and discreetly–down a drain, or onto grass, or under the cover of darkness. Small amounts of urine will not hurt the environment. In fact, a thirsty tree will appreciate the nitrogen!
Keep a USB charged headlamp hanging by your van door for night-time excursions, because–safety first… and two hands are better than one for a job like this.
So, pee is easy peasy, but what are your options for number two?
The Wild Poo
Wherever possible, be like the bear and conduct your business outside!
If you are lucky enough to park up in mostly secluded spots like leafy forests and sparse mountainsides, pooping-al-fresco is a great option. Take a hand trowel, go well off the beaten path, dig a hole and deposit your load. Cover up the mess and leave absolutely no trace.
For bonus eco-friendly points, use freshly fallen leaves to wipe, provided of course they are not poison ivy. That could lead to an embarrassing visit to the E.R.
Check out this handy multi-tool and folding shovel. It’s perfect for digging shitholes, fits neatly in your backpack and so very useful in so many situations. It even has a hatchet in case you run into those aforementioned bears.
IUNIO Multi-Use Shovel Tool
The she-wee is a fully rigid design which, again, allows women to pee while standing and fully clothed.
The Free Poo
By far the best, most eco-friendly, most satisfying way to drop anchor is into someone else’s pre-plumbed, sparkling white, pristine ceramic bowl. Use a friend or relatives house, a campground, a gas station restroom, a playground toilet or any business you have just paid to patronize.
Remember if you don’t bring it into the van, you won’t have to take it out again; this applies especially to poo. Use an app to find public toilets nearby, time your movements to coincide with the available facilities and don’t be afraid to ask. Using someone else’s toilet can extend the life of yours immeasurably, not to mention reduce the smell inside your campervan or RV.
Carry a small washbag with a toilet roll, biodegradable wipes and hand sanitizer in your backpack, just in case.
The Buck-it and Chuck-it Method & Best Portable Bucket Toilets
Best Bucket Toilets
Reliance Luggable Loo 5-Gallon
Luggable Loo is simple, cheap, and effective. It’s the cheapest pre-made bucket toilet and there’s not to much more to say on the matter 🙂
Reliance Luggable Loo 5-Gallon
Luggable Loo is simple, cheap, and effective. It’s the cheapest pre-made bucket toilet and there’s not to much more to say on the matter 🙂
Use these buckets lined with a plastic bag, bag up the results and dispose of it as soon as humanly possible into a dedicated dog poo bin. Some like to line the bag with straw, pet bedding or even kitty litter to absorb the liquids, and hopefully the aroma, but this setup should be used for emergencies only.
Now their isn’t much to these portable bucket toilets. In fact, you could probably save a couple bucks by making your own.
A makeshift, DIY portable toilet for your campervan is a quick fix if you are caught in a pinch but not to be considered a long-term solution, for health and hygiene reasons, not to mention the potential smell in a small living area.
The ‘bucket and chuck it’ method could get expensive, it certainly costs the planet in plastic and let’s face it, you might be living in a van, but hovering over a bucket every day squeezing one out? You’re better than that.
This van is your castle…
You deserve a throne.
The Cassette Toilet (The Best Portable Toilet)
Sometimes also called portapotties, chemical toilets, cassette toilet, portable toilets, or known by one of the first brand names of Thetford, these plastic portable toilets devices are an ideal solution for vanlife or those living in an RV.
With a relatively small footprint, they take up little space in your van conversion, are easy to use and straightforward to empty. They look and feel like an ordinary toilet and sitting on one of these is far from unpleasant.
The top tank is filled with water for flushing. Use a few sheets of cheap, 1 ply toilet roll which dissolves easily in the tank. A little drawer-pull releases the waste into the cassette below and closing the shutter again keeps everything sealed until the cassette is full.
There are chemical products available which when poured into the waste tank will break down the contents biologically, these are often referred to as Pink (for rinsing and scent) and Blue (for breakdown).
So what are the best portable toilets? Check out the list below!
Best Cassette Toilet (Overall)
Thetfort Porta Potti 365
Thetfort is often the name that comes to mind when pondering about the best portable toilet, as I often do.
- 4 Gallon (15L) Fresh Water Capacity
- 5.5 Gallon (21L) Waste Water Tank
- 15.36 x 17.13 x 16.6 inches
- Easy to dump with it’s swivel dump spout
Best Cassette Toilet on a Budget
CamCo Portable Toilet 5.3 Gallon
This one comes in at about half the price of the other toilets on this list, which makes it our budget option for best portable toilet.
- 2.5 Gallon (9.5L) Fresh Water Capacity
- 5.3 Gallon (20L) Waste Water Tank
- 15.5 inch H x 14 inch W x 16 inch
- Solid, sturdy construction
Best Cassette Toilets with the Smallest Footprint
Thetfort Porta-Potti White
This toilet is sleek and is designed unlike other portable toilets. It is more narrow then most, allowing you to fit it into awkward places. Plus it even has an adjustable seat height. It does require batteries for it’s electric flush, however.
- 4 Gallon (15L) Fresh Water Capacity
- 5.5 Gallon (21L) Waste Water Tank
- 17.6″ height x 15.2″ width x 17.7″ depth
- Adjustable seat height
Thetfort Porta Potti 135
A little bit more squat than the above portable toilet, and with less of a capacity, this is the shortest of the cassette toilets.
- 2.6 Gallon (9.5L) Fresh Water Capacity
- 2.6 Gallon (9.5L) Waste Water Tank
- 12.2″ Height x 13.5″ Width x 15″ Depth
- Squat and simple
Emptying A Cassette Toilet
When the time has come to empty your portable toilet, simply lift the top box off, take out the cassette and open the screw top lid, press the valve release button, avert your eyes and pour out the contents. Wear latex gloves if you are squeamish and stand back from the hole to avoid any nasty splash back.
Never, ever, ever empty the cassette anywhere that is not a dedicated disposal point or sewage system.
Ever.
Camping toilets are portable, affordable and can last many years if taken care of correctly. Using bleach or harsh chemicals to clean the unit may erode the seals which keep it airtight, the flush button requires manual ‘pumping’ and the drawer mechanisms can be flimsy as molded plastic tends to be so be gentle with the moving parts. Wash all elements of your camping toilet regularly in warm soapy water.
Look after your chemical camper toilet and it will look after you when you need it most!
Best chemicals for your portable toilet
The Composting Toilet
A lot of people do not find chemical toilets or portable cassette toilets appealing and so they want to opt towards a composting toilet.
Often seen as the ultimate aspiration of vanlife facilities, composting toilets come with advantages and disadvantages.
Composting is great for the environment when all the steps are carried out correctly. Venting is required to keep constant airflow throughout the tank and to activate the composting cycle which will involve cutting holes into your van walls. Many use coconut fiber cores as a medium to absorb the waste which comes at a price.
Some require electricity to power a small fan and to flush which is another huge consideration; what happens when your battery runs low?
Composting toilets are only useful if you have access to the next step in the process (a stage 2 compost pile), otherwise the waste produced is no more eco-friendly than the chemical toilet above and may be more troublesome to discard in the end.
Compost toilets can be expensive to install and maintain. Consider your options and where you will empty one before you make your decision!
Best Portable Toilet for Composting
Nature’s Head Composting Toilet
If you decide that you must absolutely have a composting toilet, than Nature’s Head is the leading brand, but it comes at a price.
Emptying Your Composting Toilet
So how do you empty your composting toilet, then?
There might be a bit of a controversy on this subject. As stated previously, a composting camper toilet wont actually fully compost your poo unless it can be transferred to a stage 2 compost pile.
Without one, your poo still carries all the possible diseases and problems that it would have if you didn’t attempt to compost it. This means you can’t just toss the “compost” in the woods, or use it for gardening, or leave it on your friend’s gas.
You could dig a cathole, backpacker style, to deposit your waste into… but a 7inch cathole is hard enough to dig for one poop, let alone a week’s worth or more, so that isn’t practical.
You obviously can’t dump it in a normal toilet, like you’d be able to do with a cassette camper toilet.
And whatever you do, please don’t dump it in a pit toilet at a national, state, or city park. It might seem like a good idea at first, but this puts an unnecessary strain on an already strained and tight budgeted parks system.
So that pretty much just leaves you with two options.
- Dump it in a stage 2 composting system.
- Take the compost, put it in a plastic bag, and toss it in the garbage.
Now, the second option isn’t illegal, but it sure seems like it defeats the eco-friendly purpose of a composting toilet.
RV & Van Toilet Do's and Don'ts
- DO separate liquids from solids for easy disposal
- DON’T dispose of a chemical toilet anywhere but a designated point!
- DO use the cheapest toilet roll (or RV/Marine TP) you can find, it dissolves easily to prevent clogging.
- DON’T be afraid to ask to use the facilities of a business you are patronizing
- DO keep your portapotty area well ventilated to prevent smells and wash all parts regularly
- DON’T use bleach to clean a camper portable toilet
- DO be the bear and go outside when feasible.
And Finally...
Like everything in life, living in a van is trial and error. Toilet habits are different and vary wildly from person to person. Try to find the easiest, cheapest, most eco-friendly solution that suits you, your lifestyle and your van.
Outside of using public restrooms and digging a cathole when you’re out in nature, we think that cassette toilets are the best portable toilet you can use.
Whether you live fulltime in your rig or just enjoy a jaunt in the countryside as a weekend warrior, having the right facilities onboard can make all the difference. Nobody wants to pack up and leave when they’re parked in paradise and halfway through the first of many cups of coffee, just to relieve their bowels.
Arm yourself with the necessary tools to make your movements as easy, efficient, smell-free, and low impact as possible. Shit happens, so be prepared!
What is your preferred method for taking a dump? Let us know in the comments below!
1 thought on “Toilet Talk: The Best Portable Toilet Options for Vanlife, RV, or Camping”
Hmm.. what an enlightening article. I found it really fascinating once you clarified that cassette toilets are highly compact and equipped with some of the best anti-contamination features as well. This might be helpful for my daughter and her office mates who are planning on a trip to the nearby forest park next weekend. I’ll forward this information to them so they can get the right amenity for the occasion later.