An esteemed mushroom and moss photographer and conservationist, Masana Izawa has adapted a novel way of doing his bit for nature.

Izawa has been defecating outdoors for the past 45 years since 1974, Mirror reported.

He decided to ditch indoor toilets and relieve himself in the secluded areas outside his home in the Ibaraki Prefecture, north of Tokyo, after getting engaged in a brawl to stop a waste treatment plant from being built.

The 69-year-old realised that no one was willing to take ownership of their feces and committed to give in to the philosophy based on the “circularity of nature”.

Izawa admits that pooping in the open was “very different” from doing it in the confines of one’s home but he was not physically or mentally uncomfortable in the venture.

During his nearly 50 years of maintaining the new habit, Izawa has used a toilet only 14 times and engaged in open-air bowel movements for over 15,000 times.

Elaborating his way of thinking, the Japanese man said an industrialized civilization extracts resources from the earth but fails to give anything back.

According to the report, he says that although to eat is taking life, but it is also the right of human beings.

But defecating is a responsibility that humans “need to be aware of”, he says adding the act of pooping outdoors is a way of “giving back life”.

Izawa said his actions have yielded results, as only a few days after he covered a makeshift toilet with earth, its contents start “teeming with life”.