The horrible situation that develops immediately in refugee camps is that people are forced to relieve themselves on the ground near where they are living. Soon people are walking in their own filth. Disease spreads rapidly. Children are the main victims when they play on the bare ground. During the Kosovo crisis in the late nineties, Livermore Lab scientists were asked what could be done to solve the sanitation problem in the sprawling refugee camps that were erected with tents on bare ground. Livermore staff recommended that each tent family be provided with a standard 5-gallon plastic bucket with lid to be used as a toilet. These buckets are available all over the world for less than $2.00 each. These buckets stack within each other for easy delivery. One person can easily carry ten or more of them. The procedure was to tell each family that they had to bring their waste bucket to a disposal area (a pit in the ground). They had to empty and clean the bucket before they could receive more food for the day. This procedure was also published in the respected journal Science, “Plastic Buckets for Refugee Sanitation," Science, v 284, p409, 16 April 1999. copied from: http://www.kgoradio.com/Article.asp?id=1662660&nId=0&spid=33179