Tents, alcohol, food: towns complain of trash left by Burning Man attendees

[zinn]

Burning Man has become known for wild outfits, utopian philosophy, rich
techies and celebrity attendees and, increasingly, frustrated locals in
nearby towns.

Nearly 80,000 people pour into Nevada’s Black Rock Desert each year for
the countercultural festival with community principles that include
leaving no trace in the environment and protecting social networks and
public spaces.

A prototype of the Salt and Pepper trash can seen near the Embarcadero and
Ferry Building in San Francisco.
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The sudden surge in visitors to the desert has been a boon for tourism in
towns in Nevada and California, but it has also come at a cost. For years,
residents of cities such as Reno have complained about the dust-covered
trash left behind by Burners and traffic. A local sheriff has said:
“Burning Man brings nothing to Pershing county except for heartache.”

Now the latest complaint is coming from Lake Tahoe. While the lake region
is more than two hours from the desert, visitors to the remote region of
the American west often pass through the popular tourist destinations of
Reno and Lake Tahoe. This week business owners and officials in the Lake
Tahoe town of Truckee told SFGate festivalgoers had illegally dumped their
trash in the area.

“What I’ve seen are large construction bags of trash, alcohol bottles,
tons of food, tents and large aluminum poles from shade structures,” a
local carwash owner told a photographer with the outlet. “People just
unload their motor homes. I’ve seen people sometimes spend four to six
hours pulling everything out of their vehicles, then wash their cars and
their belongings. One camper can fill up half of my capacity.”

A city council member told the outlet that after the festival “campers
often fill the dumpsters with everything from tents, shade structures and
other trash that isn’t your normal camping trash”.

Truckee has introduced some parking restrictions in part due to trash,
noise and camping on docks associated with festival attendees, the outlet
reported. The festival expects visitors to clean up after themselves, but
that has posed challenges. In 2018, the US Bureau of Land Management told
organizers that they had left too much trash after that year’s event.
Business owners from Utah to California have complained about waste left
by festival attendees.

“Some people, even when they leave here, they just throw it off the road.
They don’t want to pay, so they just throw [it] off the road,” Athena
Lamebull, who runs a disposal site in northern Nevada, told KUNR in 2019.

The festival has urged guests to properly dispose of their trash and not
leave it behind on highways. “Not only is litter irresponsible and costly
in terms of energy, time, and money for others, it is also illegal and
reflects very badly on Burning Man,” organizers said on Twitter.

Most people who attend Burning Man abide by the rules, SFGate points out,
and towns such as Truckee have said they are grateful for the increase in
visitors and support for local businesses.

This year marked the first official Burning Man festival since 2019 after
organizers cancelled the event two years in a row due to Covid. Last
summer, an event in the desert dubbed a “renegade” Burning Man drew more
than 15,000 people and criticism from local law enforcement officials.
Attendees this year endured a huge dust storm during the festival and a
more than nine-hour wait time as they left.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/07/burning-man-nevada-trash