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Burning Man cares deeply about the environment, and we take special care of the Black Rock Desert. We do everything we can to lessen our impact and Leave No Trace ... and we can't do that without the help of every Burner on the playa.
Each year, Earth Guardians compile this invaluable collection of tips, tricks and suggestions for Greening Your Burn. It all starts with careful planning, carries on to your practices on playa, then disposing of your trash and recycling after the event, and finishing up with how you live your life back home, year round.
Big ups to Karina and the Earth Guardians! Please do pay them a visit on playa (they're right on the Esplanade and easy to find), consider volunteering on one of their teams, and join us in our efforts to keep Burning Man the largest Leave No Trace event in the world!
Remember: it all depends on YOU. Please share this information with each of your campmates!
The Man burns in 43 days!
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Leaving No Trace: 7 Hot Tips
Every participant plays a part in Leaving No Trace at our ephemeral event. That's you! This JRS is chock full of important practices and ways to help, but there's a lot to do, so there's a lot to read. If you want your Leaving No Trace advice bite-sized, it all boils down to this:
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MOOP (Matter Out Of Place) is bad. Don't drop it. If you see it, pick it up and take it with you. Don't let the wind take it.
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Pack it in, pack it out. Include ALL your clean-up needs in your Burning Man plan.
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Conserve energy. Use renewable energy sources (solar, wind, biodiesel).
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Buy minimal and environmentally friendly supplies. Reuse stuff instead of replacing it whenever possible.
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Try to make most of your waste recyclable. After the event, recycle it. If you must pack out landfill trash, dispose of it responsibly.
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If it wasn't in your body, don't put it in the potty. Make a plan to deal with greywater.
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Spread the word. Clean up with your neighbors.
BONUS TIP: If you feel like giving the gift of LNT, volunteer to help take care of the playa year-round.
REMEMBER: Your environmental impact at Burning Man can affect our right to continue holding this event. The Black Rock Desert is protected federal land, and the freight train of Burners blows through lots of communities on its way in and out. If we don't minimize our impact and treat the land and its people with respect, they won't want us to come back. So let's all do our part and Leave No Trace, all right?
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Learn Before You Burn
So you made it past the bullet points. Good for you. There's much more to learn about Leaving No Trace at Burning Man. The Survival Guide is your one-stop-shop for doing it right on the playa, and the First Timer's Guide gives you the high-level overview of what Burning Man is about. If this is new to you, start there.
Whether you've Burned zero or 27 times, it couldn't hurt to brush up on the Earth Guardians' tips and information about keeping Burning Man clean and green. And for good measure, here are more eco-friendly Burner resources.
Make sure you know your stuff before you go, and make environment plans for your camp, whether it's just you or two hundred people. If you're a big camp, you should consider having a dedicated Leaving No Trace team to make sure everybody does their part.
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Rethink & Reduce What You Purchase & Bring
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How are you going to be sustainable at BRC in 2014? Consider the materials being used, waste produced and energy consumed. What are your plastic and carbon footprints? Use greener materials. Use nontoxic, biodegradable, renewable and salvageable materials, and those that can be reused or repurposed at home or at next year's event.
Camp
Select construction materials and decorations for your camp that are reusable year after year (it's cheaper!). If you can't reuse it, make sure it's recyclable. Reduce your use of disposable plastic. Design your camp structures for reuse, easy deconstruction, storage and salvage. Use screws instead of nails. Use reclaimed wood and metal when possible.
Clothes & Costumes
Reuse and repurpose old clothes to the maximum possible extent. Buying new things and disposing of old things increases your environmental footprint. And be cognizant of your costuming. Some things that can be particularly problematic (and should be used with the greatest of care, if at all) include feathers, glitter, sequins, beads, bindis, body gems, glued-on stuff, fake eyelashes, etc. Here's a list of notoriously MOOPy items and alternatives to using them.
Food & Water
Minimize kitchen waste and clean-up by planning simple, low-dishwashing meals, repackaging and preparing food in advance. Bring less food than you think you'll need. Take off every piece of unnecessary packaging and put food (and everything else, for that matter) in reusable containers.
Bring water in big reusable containers and bring reusable cups, utensils, bowls or plates, not flimsy disposables. Ask visitors to your camp to BYOC (bring your own cup) and take your own cup to the Center Camp Café and fashionable bars. A carabineer or shower hook easily secures it for transport around the city.
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Conserve Energy & Reduce Use of Fossil Fuels
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Reduce energy use by getting creative about ways to conserve. Incorporate energy-efficient light bulbs like LEDs or EL wire (not disposable glow sticks). Use rechargeable batteries. There are also many handy lights that come with their own solar cells.
Use renewable energy sources (human, solar, wind, biodiesel). The Alternative Energy Zone has been generator-free on the playa for many years! If you must use a generator, consider biodiesel fuels instead of gasoline. Visit Snow Koan Solar on playa to check out their solar-based recharging station.
Coordinate with other participants to carpool or jump on the Burner Express, to reduce your transportation costs and impacts! Share transportation and energy generation with neighboring camps. Note that many Regional contacts also coordinate to ship different camps’ supplies to the playa. Check with your local regional contact and check out the Burning Man rideshare page.
Get your car's maintenance done on a regular basis. A well-maintained car produces lower emissions and will make it all the way to BRC (and back again). Consider purchasing carbon credits to offset your transportation and energy (generators) emissions. The Coolingman website contains a handy spreadsheet to calculate your carbon emissions.
Keep your vehicle or RV from dripping oil, gasoline or other fluids (greywater or black water) on to the playa. BLM did a study on this and requests that we use pans or other barriers under our cars, especially older cars, to prevent drips. Be aware that BLM and volunteers walk around the city looking for potential violations. Leave No Drips!
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Minimize Waste, Reuse & Recycle
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There are no trash cans in Black Rock City, so you must take any trash you generate home with you and beware of the hungry wind. Bring tethers, anchors, containers and covers to keep light stuff from blowing away from your camp or your vehicle.
Plan to recycle. Buy only aluminum cans and dispose of them at Recycle Camp or pack them out. Be sure to separate any other recyclables (glass, steel and plastic) at recycle centers. There are many good beers in cans!
Plan your camp to minimize clean-up efforts and don't wait until the end of the week to pick stuff up. Clean as you go. This will help you from getting overwhelmed by the mess and keep trash from blowing out of reach. Seal the small amount of trash you have left in big plastic bags, or in five-gallon buckets with lids, to take home, compost or, if you must, drop off some trash in local landfills.
Food, Water & Other Liquids
Collect food waste in a mesh bag. The food will dry up, becoming light and nearly odorless. Composting food waste not only reduces garbage but repurposes the waste to back to the earth. Use a container with a tight lid for transporting the compost home. Here's food wisdom from a decade on the playa.
How will you dispose of your greywater from your kitchen and shower? We cannot dump greywater directly on the playa. Camps can use small footprint evapotrons, or collect their greywater and take it to one of the RV dump stations along all exodus routes, or contract with United Site Services to let a professional handle the grey water disposal. If you're in a small camp, with minimal dish- and body-washing water, you might choose to
treat your greywater: pour it through a filter (like a paint sieve), disinfect it with (teeny amounts of) bleach, then, since it is treated, sprinkle it in your camp to keep down dust.
If it wasn't in your body, don't put it in the potty! Only single-ply toilet paper and human waste in the potties. Double-ply is too thick. Anything else will clog up the toilet vendor two-inch hose resulting in unserviced potties, and that means trouble. Always use a potty for your body waste - don't go on the playa. Having a pee jug near your bed will cut down on trips to the potties.
Disposing of Your Recycling & Trash
There are several 24-hour trash and recycling centers along the route out of Black Rock City that are willing to accept our recycling and trash. Recycling is free and trash disposal is approximately $5 per 35-gallon trash bag.
Proceeds beyond expenses are donated to new Black Rock Solar installations or other community programs in the region. Nonperishable food and water will be donated to local Food Banks, and bicycles will be donated to local bike programs to support kids in need.
You'll find these locations and more information in the Survival Guide.
On the way home, secure your load. Don't let your trash fly off your vehicle, and do not dump it on the side of the road or at a rest stop! Use an approved dumping facility or take it home with you. Starting home, take a rest stop early; at the entrance gate, at a wide pullout, or maybe in Empire (if not too congested). Tie down your load and check to make sure it's secure. It is most likely to fail early in the trip.
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Respect Your Neighborhood, Share Resources & Hunt MOOP
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Promote LNT neighborhoods. Initiate a MOOP sweep with your neighbors to keep your part of the city clean and green. If you get overwhelmed, ask for help.
Carry a MOOP bag as you walk around your part of the city. What’s a MOOP bag? Ideally, it’s a narrow fabric bag, (plastic bags can blow away) with a strap or clip, that you can carry with you on the playa. Your MOOP bag gives you a place to stow your own MOOP as well as MOOP you find on the playa.
Gifting in a LNT Community: instead of bringing cheap trinkets for gifts that become MOOP, consider the gift of one's self. Look around and pitch in to help keep things clean: offer a tool, an extra hand, a gesture of thanks. Try giving a smile, a helping hand or a joke. Help a neighbor set up camp. You are the best gift.
Partner with other camps to share resources. Many camps now collaborate on shared energy sources and grey water management. If you're in a village, you work with your village organizers to place camps so that sharing generators (or even better, renewable power sources) can happen.
Discuss the possibility of sharing water and water treatment needs with others in your camp and village. Many theme camps within villages take advantage of shared resources to use larger scale processes to store their drinking and shower water and treat their greywater. Do not bring single serving, one-use disposable plastic bottles of water to Burning Man!
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Burning Things Responsibly
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Don't burn on the unprotected playa. While resilient, the playa surface is vulnerable to scarring from careless burning. Burning directly on the alkaline playa BAKES the surface into a dark, hard, brick-like material. Use community burn barrels or a burn platform.
Speaking of burn platforms, this year's Burn "Gardens" and Wood Reclamation Stations will be located along the Esplanade at 3, 6 and 9:00. Each of the three Burn Gardens will consist of four raised metal platforms on a decomposed granite (DG) burn scar prevention pad (this is how we protect the playa from scars). Trained volunteers will assist and direct you and your pile of burnables. Staffing will begin on Sunday morning at 9:00am and continue 24 hours/day through Tuesday evening.
Reduce and Reuse: Fires are for celebration and spiritual connection, not places to dump garbage. Low temperature burning produces toxic emissions, so minimize what you burn. Recycle or reuse materials. If you do burn, be sure the wood you place in the burn platform is well contained. When the platforms are overloaded, burning wood can hit the playa and cause a burn scar. Have tools on hand to break down and cut up larger pieces.
Burn Clean: Be careful to burn only clean (no paint) wood or paper! Don't burn anything that is toxic! Carpets, cushioned furniture, PVC and other plastics release dioxins, formaldehyde, and other nasty stuff. The Community Burn Gardens are low to the ground, and produce smoke that is easily inhaled. The low temperature, incomplete combustion emits toxic gases and particulates. Do not put any trash into your burn barrels! Don't burn that sofa! Burning wool creates cyanide gas. Don't do it. Schlep that thing home and take it to the dump.
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Volunteer to Do Your Part Year-Round
The Earth Guardians have volunteer teams that coordinate directly with BLM around BRC on LNT issues and have volunteer teams that support our information desk, and many speakers and workshops in the pavilion. We also need folks to participate in our hot spring patrols. Interested? Visit our website or email us for more information. You can sign up for shifts using shiftboard or on playa early in the week so that you can attend one of our volunteer trainings.
Devote two hours to general cleanup in Black Rock City. This means MOOP sweeps in the streets, public spaces, and open playa, removing all burn scars, dunes, leftover debris, or other physical traces of our presence. Stop by the Earth Guardian camp during the week and jump on our MOOP train mornings at 11:30. We'll give you a beautiful reusable MOOP bag. If the MOOP train is already out, we'll direct you to the areas of the city that need the most attention. Consider staying an extra day to help clean-up and avoid the Sunday and Monday traffic!
If you really want to give back, consider joining the DPW post-event restoration crews. Help us clean and restore the playa, so that we and all its visitors can appreciate its beauty again and again.
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We were listening to ...
... all the rap music in our entire library on shuffle. "Do Ya Head Like This" by E-40 was playing when we got to the end, and we were doing our heads like that.
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Burning Man • PO Box 884688 SF, CA 94188
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