Belgrade company, Phillips Environmental Products taps worldwide market

There really is money to be made in backcountry pooh processing, a Belgrade company is learning, but its owners had to aim both wide and high.

Phillips Environmental Products http://www.thepett.com/ is a 5-year-old, family-owned company that manufactures PETT, a portable toilet and bagging system that lets people pack up their own feces and haul it away in a safe, sanitary, non-odorous manner.

By SCOTT McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2004/04/30/news/poohbzbigs.txt

It sounds like a funny business, but places without toilets are drawing bigger crowds all the time, and that means bigger messes.

And cleaning up those messes means business, and perhaps dozens of new jobs in the Gallatin Valley.

On a recent trip to Peru, Brian Phillips, vice-president of the company headed by his father, Bill, inspected some of the slop on the famous Inca trail, a three- to four-day hike from Cuzco to Machu Picchu that attracts more than 50,000 people a year.

There isn’t a single toilet along the way, Phillips said. Not even an outhouse.

"Some people leave their pile in the middle of a stone step" carved into a mountain centuries ago, Phillips said.

Now, trekkers are being ordered by the Peruvian government to carry and use his products, which he calls "wag bags."

The bags are the receptacles that hang under the PETT toilet. But they can be used without the toilet; just dig a little hole to hold the bag open.

Each bag contains what Phillips calls "Pooh Powder," a combination of absorbent polymer, deodorizing aluminum silicate and a secret ingredient the family won’t reveal.

Do your business in the bag, double seal it in the accompanying stout, but biodegradable, plastic bag, and dispose of the package in any garbage can.

A couple of trails big enough to accommodate vehicles intersect the Inca Trail, Phillips said, and will be equipped with receptacles for the bags.

The product, approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, already has believers in this country, including the U.S. Forest Service, which uses them in isolated firefighter camps.

"It took a really messy issue and made it simple," Susan Ague, a Forest Service supply officer in Boise, said after she started purchasing PETTs two years ago.

Since then, all branches of the U.S. military have begun using them, including special forces in Iraq, Phillips said. The Second Marine Division has bought $500,000 worth of products in the past six months, he said

But the Peruvian deal has him particularly excited.

"It’s opened up a whole new market in eco-tourism worldwide," he said. "My next target is Kilimanjaro."

He’s also eyeballing the sanitation situations at Mount Everest and Mount Fuji, though he acknowledged that, even if his product is required, there might be some problems enforcing the rules.

That’s been the situation at Mount Denali, in Alaska.

"It’s hard enough to get people to come off the mountain with their lives and their gear, let alone their waste," he said.

On Mount Whitney in California, granite surfaces don’t allow waste to be buried and existing outhouses "are really overwhelmed," said Brian Spitek, a wilderness manager there.

He said he’s been handing out free Wag Bags to hikers and "almost always, they’re happy to use them."

The wag bags aren’t cheap — they retail for more than $2 apiece, which can add up for a big group on a long trip — but they are convenient, especially when compared to the sealed buckets or ammunition cans used in many areas, like the Grand Canyon.

And if the growth continues, the company’s success will spread across the Gallatin Valley.

The wag bag kits are assembled by home workers, and Phillips said he’s hoping to hire a lot more of them.

"We’re going to need 50-100 more people for assembly in the next few months," he predicted.