Our shop is growing! We’ve partnered with some amazing brands that offer high-quality products, making it easier and more fun for your family to get outdoors. They also happen to have missions and values that pair well with ours here at Morrison Outdoors. Is there a brand or product that you think we should carry? Let us know by sending an email to hello@morrisonoutdoors.com !
One of the brands now featured in our shop, PACT Outdoors, set out to tackle an issue that makes many people a little uncomfortable: Pooping in the outdoors. Not only do they tackle all things human scat, but they do it in a sustainable way that reduces human impact in the outdoors. We sat down with Jake Thomas, the co-founder of PACT Outdoors, to learn the “scoop” (pun intended) on what PACT Outdoors is all about.
What is Your Mission?
Our mission is to make backcountry bathroom practice easier and more sustainable for people.
If you can believe it, human waste is one of the biggest resource issues affecting our public lands. When poop isn’t buried or packed out in sensitive areas it contaminates our waterways, harms wildlife and is a public health issue. Waste management is one of the biggest budget line items for land managers, and dealing with waste makes their job really tough. Given the recent layoffs and budget cuts, being prepared to poop…just in case…is one of the simplest things we can do to support them and make their jobs a little better. Poop is also consistently one of the top reasons that land managers are forced to reduce access. It is a major driver in closing dispersed camping or issuing fewer permits in high-use areas.
We did some research with Moosejaw Mountaineering a number of years ago. Our “poop survey” got 25,000 respondents. 72% of people said they’d had a time in the outdoors when they had to go, but didn’t have the tools to do so properly. At PACT, we believe people are good. And if you give them better tools, they’ll happily use them for their own benefit and everyone else’s. So, we’re focused on making better, more sustainable products for outdoor bathroom practice.
How Did Your Brand Start?
Believe it or not, we were changing diapers during the pandemic. While adjusting to being a parent, poop was always on our minds. My co-founder, Noah, and I had a fun brainstorm about the whole idea - what techniques we each use, how inadequate the current products were. We had a good laugh and the conversation ended with one of us saying, “Yeah, but who wants to start a company based around poop…”
So, we forgot about it, until we started hearing from trail orgs and land managers, and major news sources like the NYTimes and Guardian about how bad the “poop problem” was getting. So, with some hesitation and reluctance, we started working on it.
Part of the magic of our products and approach to managing waste was using fungi. We borrowed from a field called mycoremediation, which uses fungi to repair contaminated soil. It has applications in wildfire repair, chemical spills, waterway contamination, and more. We took this large-scale approach and brought it to the individual with our PACT Tabs. They’re small, wooden plugs inoculated with fungal mycelium. When you add them to the cat-hole with your poop they break it down faster and kill harmful pathogens like E. Coli that contaminate waterways, etc. This took a lot of research, specifically to identify a safe and effective species and understand how to make it work really well.
Why Do You Feel It’s Important For Families to Get Outdoors?
Where to even begin. Our kids are a big part of why we started a business that addresses a sustainability issue. We want the next generation to enjoy and have the same access to the outdoors that we have. It’s so fundamental to who we are as people - our health, our happiness, our feelings of being small in this universe, but also being empowered and having some agency in an increasingly scary world. Nature is part of the medicine. Therefore, creating products that help parents feel like they can spend time outdoors safely and easily is really important to us.
How Do Your Products Help Families Enjoy Nature?
Pooping is a never ending ’thing’ when you’re a parent. Making all-in-one kits for handling those unexpected bathroom trips arguably helps parents more than anyone else. We hear all the time about how parents stash our products in the car, whether they’re heading outdoors or just on a long drive.
Our compressed Wipes are maybe the hero product in our parents' minds. Wet wipes and TP have a lot of limitations for parents when you’re outdoors or on the go. Our compressed Wipes are smaller, lighter, and have exceptional chemical reduction certifications, which make them safer. They decompose rapidly. They never dry out in the packaging. So, we addressed a lot of small issues that parents and environmentally-conscious shoppers encounter with the traditional products. All of that helps to create peace of mind and allows parents to focus on just having fun with their kids, because they know if a spill or a bathroom emergency arises, they’re prepared.
You can find various PACT Outdoors products in our shop, including the PACT Wipes and the full PACT Outdoors Bathroom Kit.
