Clean Camping

People love camping, especially in the summer! It is a chance for them to disconnect from their usual lives and technology, spend time with their families and friends, and enjoy nature. While roughing it can be fun and make the experience more authentic, neglecting personal hygiene in the process can cause illnesses. Campgrounds offer some amenities, whether they are fully equipped restrooms with showers, or simple composting toilets. Either way, campers need to make personal hygiene a priority, and some additions to your facilities can make this basic necessity much more convenient.

The Need for Hygiene

The outdoor recreation industry is becoming more and more popular, with consumers in North America spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year. While camping offers several health benefits, including improved sleep, uplifted mood, and great physical activity, there are some downsides too. Up to 74% of people who camp and hike can get wilderness-acquired diarrhea. Bacteria, parasites, and viruses, the most common ones being giardia and cryptosporidium cause this. These are often found in contaminated water and can be passed from one person to another through poor personal hygiene, such as fecal-oral transmission by unwashed hands. Campers will do their best to be self-sufficient, but forgetting to bring supplies, not packing enough, and unexpected circumstances are inevitable problems.

Healthy Campers

When full-fledged restrooms are offered, equipping them with no-touch appliances will reduce the risk of cross-contamination, decrease wasted product and resources, and maintain cleanliness. Automatic flush systems, soap dispensers, faucets, and paper towel dispensers or air hand dryers will give your visitors the clean hands they need to keep themselves and the people around them healthy. Installing hair and body shampoo dispensers in each shower stall will benefit these vacationers too. Campers may experience skin irritation if they do not properly wash off sunscreen and sweat after a long day of activity and may avoid bringing shower supplies in an attempt to pack lightly.

If running water is not available, dispensers of hand sanitizer will ensure that everyone can clean their hands after using the bathroom. Hand hygiene is especially important when campers are about to prepare their own food, as one pair of contaminated hands can make an entire group sick when that person helps out in food preparation.

Family Hygiene

Camping is becoming an increasingly popular activity in North America, especially for families, and providing baby-changing amenities can make children’s hygiene much easier for their parents to manage. A changing table allows mothers and fathers to properly clean their toddlers up, while a diaper disposal system isolates used diapers to prevent cross-contamination and odor. Improper and/or infrequent diaper changes may cause diaper rash, which will make the effected kids very uncomfortable during their trip and cause parents distress.

No matter how extensive a campground’s resources are, promoting good hygiene is a great way to keep all visitors healthy during their stay.