Hygiene hijinks

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• If using knives, take the time to read and understand the Scout knife safety guidance.
• This activity’s split into three bases – it’s best to set them up before everyone arrives.

• You’ll need a two litre bottle and two paper cups for each group.
• You’ll also need at least three pairs of scissors, so you can have at least one pair at each base.
• Make sure that the sticks you use for the ‘Twig toothbrush’ base are a safe type of green wood (see the list below). You could also buy miswak sticks online. They shouldn’t be thicker than a centimetre, and shouldn’t be more than 20 centimetres long.

Get organised

1. Everyone should think about why hygiene and cleanliness are important in survival situations. Being hygienic is important to prevent infection and disease, and keep people healthy.
2. Everyone should split into three groups.

3. Each group should go to a different base. They should get stuck into the activity there.
4. When the person leading the activity makes a signal, everyone should move to another base and give it a go.
5. When the person leading the activity makes another signal, everyone should move to the final base, so they can try the final activity.
6. Everyone should come back together and reflect.

Water filters

This base is all about making a filter to remove dirt and debris from water. A filter alone won’t make it safe to drink – you must heat filtered water to a rolling boil and boil it for at least five minutes before you drink it.

1. Add a small amount of dirt and debris to the water to create some dirty water. Set it aside while you make your water filter.
2. Take two paper cups and poke a hole in the bottom of one using the scissors.

3. Layer the natural materials (such as small stones, moss, and leaves) in the cup with the hole in to create a filter. Experiment with different amounts of each material, and their positions in the cup.
4. Hold the water filter cup above the over cup, and slowly pour the dirty water into the filter cup. A good filter should remove all of the dirt and debris.
5. Pour the water through a few times to see if you can remove even more dirt. Try to perfect your filter each time, until it works as well as possible.
6. Boil the water as described (heat it to a rolling boil, then boil it for at least five minutes) if anyone’s planning to try any.

Waste water

This base is all about dealing with waste. Even in survival situations we create waste, including food waste, dirty water, or waste that would normally end up in a toilet. The activity will show everyone why it’s important to dig waste water pits and toilets a good distance from water sources (and downhill from their camp), so the waste doesn’t seep through the soil and end up in the drinking water.

1. The person leading the base should use scissors to piece lots of holes in the plastic bottle.

2. Put the plastic bottle in a washing up bowl (or another big container) and add a few centimetres of fresh water to the bowl.
3. Add some food colouring to another container of water to turn it into ‘waste water’.
4. The person leading the base should pour up to two litres of waste water into the bottle; everyone should try to cover all of the holes using their hands and fingers so the waste water can’t escape the bottle.

5. Lift the bottle into another container (still covering the holes) so they can see how contaminated their fresh water has become.
6. The person leading the base should explain that, just like the bottle, soil is full of lots of little holes that water can flow through. Whenever people pour waste water (including human waste) into the ground, it flows through the little holes and seeps through the soil. If pits are too close to water sources, the waste could contaminate the water and make people very ill.

Twig toothbrush

This base is all about oral hygiene. The last thing you need in a survival situation is problems with your teeth or mouth that could stop you eating (or lead to a nasty infection). Humans have been using miswaks for thousands of years.

1. Everyone should get a miswak stick, or a suitable green stick from the types listed below. No one should put anything in their mouth unless they’re absolutely sure they know what it is and that it’s safe.

2. Use scissors (or a knife) to score and remove the bark from one end of their stick, so a few centimetres are exposed.
3. Gently chew on the exposed end of their miswak to soften it and create bristles.
4. Soak the bristles of their miswak in water for a few minutes to soften them.
5. Now the miswaks are ready to use! Everyone should try gently brushing their teeth with the end of the bristles.