Burning Man is all about “Leave No Trace.” But what happens to the tons of trash once it leaves the playa?
Another wild, weird, wonderful Burning Man comes to a close
The art, the music — the dust and mud — it all came together to make another memorable gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
NIXON, NV — Sitting on a dusty lawn chair alongside the road, Marc Lowery is turning Burning Man’s trash into his own personal treasure at $10 a bag.
Burning Man is the world’s largest “Leave No Trace” event, but that applies only to physical trash on the dry lakebed where this year 62,000 attendees partied for a week. Just as Burners are required to bring in all the food and water they need for the week, they’re also required to remove all their trash, down to every last bit of glitter.
That’s where Lowery comes in.
In a roadside pullout surrounded by more than a dozen dumpsters and roll-off trash containers, Lowery watches as his family and a team of college students swarm the dusty vehicles as they pull off to hand over their trash.
Lowery, 45, charges $5 for a small trash bag and $10 for big ones. He also collects used gas cans, dusty chairs, battered bikes and gallons upon gallons of water.
International Burning Man attendees, he said, have to buy almost everything they need once they arrive in the United States, and then leave behind whatever won’t fit in their suitcases.
“Whatever they can’t take with them, they dump out,” Lowery said. “It’s pretty crazy watching.”
Lowery donates the leftover water and gas to fellow members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, and sells some of the other things people drop off.
“It’s a cycle,” he said. “People come out here and spend what they need, and then give us whatever they don’t want.”
Burning Man’s leave-no-trace ethic is deeply woven into the annual event’s fabric. Camps are responsible for policing the sand where they set up, and Burning Man officials name-and-shame campers who fail to thoroughly clean up in an annual report.
The event’s federal permit is predicated on removing all physical traces of what attendees call “MOOP” — matter out of place.
Transporting 62,000 people to desert has significant environmental impact
“There is no event on the planet this size with no trash cans,” said Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell.
Nevertheless, the organization’s critics note that while Black Rock City’s temporary residents leave nothing behind on the dry lake bed, the event still has a significant environmental impact.
There’s the fuel they burn to drive or fly there, the diesel generators powering many camps and their massive sound stages, even the air pollution caused by burning the wooden Man and Temple each year.
Last year, 85% of attendees arrived in a vehicle, and 32% came from California. Nearly 20% of Burners came from a country other than the United States or Canada, often flying from Europe or Asia, according to the official Black Rock City Census.
Goodell said the Burning Man nonprofit, which stages the event, is committed to reducing its environmental footprint, in large part by slashing the amount of diesel burned to make electricity. And an increasing amount of the propane that powers the flame-throwing dragons and other art cars comes from renewable sources.
Further, both the organization and attendees are increasingly using solar panels and batteries, rather than small generators, to power everything from air conditioning to art cars.
Burning Man investing in sustainable options for energy, waste
Burning Man has committed to being carbon negative by 2030. With the help of donors, Burning Man has invested heavily in everything from large-scale solar installations to composting toilets that don’t need to be emptied. This year’s city also offered free solar charging for electric vehicles and e-bikes.
Another program on the playa collects food scraps that then get composted and used to grow food at Burning Man’s Fly Ranch, according to the organization’s sustainability report.
Burning Man officials note that while their event receives significant criticism, the same people who attend would likely otherwise be on a different vacation, consuming a similar amount of resources.
Still, Goodell said she’s heard the environmental criticisms, and believes the event can do more to shape behavior far from the playa. Among past high-profile attendees are Elon Musk and Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Ben Cohen, and Burning Man officials always encourage participants to take the lessons learned on the playa back to the “default world” they live in.
“Burners are always trying to make things better,” Goodell said. “Whatever humanity does, we’re doing it here.”
At Burning Man, the sole exception to the “no garbage left behind” system exists for attendees who arrived on the “Burner Express” bus shuttles. Launched more than a decade ago to help reduce the number of vehicles driving from Reno, Nevada, and San Francisco to the Black Rock Desert and back, the service provides each rider with a single trash bag and another for recycling.
Cleaning up after Burning Man ‘awesome business’ for Nevadan
Burning Man’s approach to trash and sustainability helped attract first-time Burner Hanz Atia, 32, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. As she and her husband dropped off their trash and recycling, Atia said she thought hard about all the one-time-use items a week of camping often requires, from plastic water bottles to disposable coolers.
“As we were preparing, I tried to be very conscious about buying things we wouldn’t just use once,” said Atia, who works in sustainability issues. “Trash doesn’t ever just disappear.”
Off the playa, Lowery and his crew were doing their best to remove the trash, even if it doesn’t actually disappear. He said he takes a week off each year to run the trash collection point, one of several along the narrow road running south to Interstate 80.
Trash dots that road, from bags that apparently fell off vehicles to shiny reflective window shades, mangled bikes and other detritus.
Lowery said he finds it amusing to see how much stuff Burners leave behind. But he’s not terribly upset about it, at $10 a bag.
“There’s always going to be trash. You just have to put it in the right place and do the right thing,” he said. “It’s an awesome business.”