17 ms·

The map that keeps Burning Man honest

767 points by speckx 6mo ago

childofhedgehog 6mo ago
So a giant party can clean up after itself, but 4th of July in Tahoe for example is a toxic mess. I wish more people would practice these principles. It’s impressive how well this is cleaned up.
- phillmv 6mo ago
  it helps that there's a regulatory agency that verifies the cleanup happened! if the 4th of july might get canceled the following year ppl might be more aggressive around cleaning up.
  - pstuart 6mo ago
    Participants also have to feel like they are part of the event rather than passive spectators.
    - socalgal2 6mo ago
      Do they? Japanese clean up after themselves when they fill the parks at cherry blossom season or a fireworks festival. Seems like you just need to feel responsible for yourself
      - dghlsakjg 6mo ago
        Most people clean up after themselves, even in hyper individualist America. The Japanese clean up after everyone including the shitty few who don't clean up after themselves.
        socalgal2 6mo ago
        no my experience. Go see a public park in Japan on weekend at the beginning of April. Every portion of the park will be covered in people. At the end of the day they'll all go home and the park will be mostly clean except for the garbage collection area. Compare that to USA, Go to the National Mall (the grass in DC) on the 4th of July. See it's covered in people. Check on the 5th of July. The entire place will be covered in trash and refuse.
        dghlsakjg 6mo ago
        That isn’t in contradiction to what I said. It is further evidence of my argument. If 2% of the people on the mall on the 4th don’t clean up after themselves and the 98% don’t pick up the slack, it will be disgusting, even if 98% of the people are responsible for their own trash. Americans draw a hard line on trash that is theirs and trash that isn’t. Japanese do not. My theory is that in Japan people see it as their responsibility to clean up, regardless of who made the mess. In the west, most people are only concerned with their own mess.
      - komali2 6mo ago
        Could be because people growing up in Japan are taught that they're an intrinsic part of any place, event, or group of people that includes their presence. Kids in classrooms in Japan are helping clean up together with everyone else at age 4. It's kinda the opposite of "responsible for yourself," it's a civic sense that extends to include everyone and everything around you - including things that weren't directly caused by you-as-individal. In the case of the cherry blossoms, they were planted for the enjoyment of the people, and thus the people who come to enjoy them are a part of that system. The cherry blossom viewing events where thousands of people come to picnic, only is a "thing" because thousands of people come - everyone there is a participant by virtue of attending. Thus they hold part of the responsibility for the outcome of the event and the aftermath.
- browningstreet 6mo ago
  There are volunteer opportunities to help clean-up after the 4th of July festivities in Tahoe.
- gosub100 6mo ago
  The giant party just dumps their trash in the Reno Sparks area on the way home. Search for burning man at /r/Reno if you don't believe me
  - rickharrison 6mo ago
    This 100%. They only care about their playa. As soon as they are off, their considerations go out the window and they trash every other town they want to.
  - donkers 6mo ago
    There are some shitty Burners and those cause the most visible problems, but there are a lot of conscientious ones too (I think it’s the majority of them). Painting them all with the same brush isn’t quite right, a lot of us work hard to do things the right way (like spending hours in line to pay to dump trash at the Reno municipal transfer station). I don’t know how to get the shitty ones to do the right thing though, besides lots of public shaming. It’s hard to avoid having any jerks in a city of 70K people.
    - gosub100 6mo ago
      > I don’t know how to get the shitty ones to do the right thing though, I know. Use the $600/person or whatever cost is now to have trash service out there. Ever think of that?
      - donkers 6mo ago
        Yes, and it kinda defeats the purpose. The event is in large part about personal responsibility and accountability. Adding trash service out there would make it even easier for people to bring more than they need, consume more, leave shit everywhere, etc. And that money is already used for existing services and the BLM permit paid to the government, it's not like it's just sitting there ready to be spent on trash services. And at that point, increasing ticket prices makes it more inaccessible to people, and then cue the complaints that it's an event for such-and-such rich people blah blah whatever.
- stouset 6mo ago
  Which makes it even more infuriating to me when people use the MOOP map as evidence that burners leave trash everywhere and destroy the desert every year. It’s certainly worse than not having the event in the first place, but it is quite literally better about garbage than any large scale gathering on the planet. Burners do still need to be better about leaving their trash in Reno, but even with that it’s hard to see how it’s not monumentally better than virtually anything else.
  - saila 6mo ago
    If I understand correctly, you're saying that leaving trash in Reno is bad, not that that's what people should do? I first read your comment as saying that people should leave their trash in Reno, but a sibling comment makes me think it's the opposite.
    - stouset 6mo ago
      Sorry, yes, I should have made that clearer. Burners should as a whole be better about [the fact that they] just dump their trash in Reno on the way out. It’s an enormous problem, and completely indefensible particularly given the number of cheap trash collection sites you drive past on the way out. Still, by comparison, burners are practically saints. Going back to the event itself, I attended Lightning in a Bottle once. I was absolutely disgusted at the end of it. Entire camps quite literally just left, abandoning everything. Brand new equipment and the boxes it was sold in just left for others to deal with. And not just isolated groups either, people had done this absolutely everywhere.
    - ashdksnndck 6mo ago
      To be clear, what you’re supposed to do is dump your trash in places you’re allowed to dump it. If you have a lot of trash, most economical option is often to go to the public transfer stations or landfills in the Reno area (but that only works if they are open). Also, there are services on the side of the highway that accept trash for $N per bag. Only give your trash to someone if you can see the dumpster it’s going into and the dumpster is not full. There have been scams where people charged to accept trash and then just left it there to get blown around the desert. Alternatively, you could drive your trash all the way home and let your local utilities handle it. But when I’ve had my cargo trailer piled with leaking garbage bags I’ve wanted to get rid of it ASAP.
- aaron695 6mo ago
  [dead]
- seb1204 6mo ago
  Japanese visitors were applauded for cleaning up after themselves in the stadium. So it is an attitude thing too.
- Litost 6mo ago
  Much as I love Glastonbury festival, even though I stopped going a few years back, the amount of waste generated definitely seems problematic. I think the festival does a great job of trying to deal with this problem, from the large number of lovingly decorated bins, through to all the site clearup teams both during and after and all the messaging. But as highlighted elsewhere, it's definitely more of a cultural problem than anything. It's always depressing just casually observing the amount of abandoned tents on the way out and the amount of litter either put in the wrong recycling bins or just discarded less than yards from them. And the problems isn't just the cost which could be spent on good causes - £750,000+ [0] but the accidental effect of say a cow eating a tent peg (it's a working farm). As someone who litter picks and talks to litter picking groups it's definitely a big problem nationwide sadly. Probably unsurprisngly this always seems to be much worse in the higher traffic areas with the main stages than it is in say the Green or Healing field areas though their might be demographic and contextual reasons for that also. I've not been to any of the other main UK festivals in a long time, e.g. Reading, V Festival etc. but I'm guessing they aren't going to be any better? [0] - https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife/glastonbury-festival-clean-up-how-7260772 https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife/glas...
  - berkes 6mo ago
    > It's always depressing just casually observing the amount of abandoned tents on the way out Not just tents, but all sorts of camping gear, carts, clothes, food, gimmics, and so on. Many in good condition. Aside from the waste having to be cleared, it's very wasteful to throw away good stuff. I am convinced this is a cultural problem indeed. Stuff like a tent or a gas-burner is cheap. Cheap compared to what it cost (in % of monthly income) decades ago, and cheap compared to the ticket and other spendings on that festival. The cost of a tent (or the costs of some cans of food, some shirts, a funny hat, an inflatable flamingo, a chair) is nothing on the total bill of a festival. That new tent you bought, costs about as much as that beer you spilled when you bumped into that drunk dude. So, purely economically, it makes sense to just leave it behind. Why carry your (now dirty) tent, food, cloths, etc home, when you can leave it, have a more pleasant return trip, and just buy new stuff next year. I think this is a very good analogy for why we are unable to stop ruining the world in an ever increasing pace.
soared 6mo ago
Imagine if environmental regulation, pollution, etc looked like this.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  This is an environmental regulatory requirement by the Federal Bureau of Land Management.
  - john_strinlai 6mo ago
    for the curios or those that skipped over it: "Black Rock City is only allowed to return to the playa each year if it passes a strict post-event inspection from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM): No more than one square foot of debris can remain per acre (0.23 m²/ha)."
    - Scoundreller 6mo ago
      K, but what’s a square foot in metric? And percent would be better here. Or per Mille to be annoying.
      - Sardtok 6mo ago
        Read it again, it says right there in square metres.
        hk__2 6mo ago
        Isn’t it strange to mesure this in surface rather than volume?
        Jarwain 6mo ago
        Not much difference between a 12" and a 18" lag bolt for the purpose of "how much trash is visible and impacts terrain". Surface feels a bit fairer in that sense. Or at least, easier to measure.
cmiles8 6mo ago
My respect for Burning Man just went up a lot. These big events usually leave a giant mess behind. Glad to see they take the cleanup and restoration so seriously.
- quux 6mo ago
  To paraphrase Captain Malcom Reynolds: "My days of not taking Burning Man seriously are definitely coming to a middle."
- testing22321 6mo ago
  I’d have a lot more respect and the whole thing would be a hell of a lot easier if each person just picked up after themselves and there was no herculean cleanup required
deleted 6mo ago
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charles_f 6mo ago
> its release inevitably fuels a bit of public finger-pointing Is this what's helping with that? > the most striking trend is that the community has steadily improved at Leave No Trace Probably not only? But shame and avoidance of shame can be good motivation
BergAndCo 6mo ago
[dead]
john_strinlai 6mo ago
the full map image for 2025: https://webassets.burningman.org/largeimages/MOOP_Map_2025_03.09.26.jpg https://webassets.burningman.org/largeimages/MOOP_Map_2025_0...
- dylan604 6mo ago
  Only 146 cigarette butts? That's amazingly much lower than I would have expected.
  - wnissen 6mo ago
    That's not just amazing, it's inconceivable! I can go on a hike on almost any trail in the SF Bay Area and pick up a half dozen in a couple hours.
    - dylan604 6mo ago
      Yeah, that was where I was coming from. I know very few people that stub out their ciggy and then put the butt in the pocket to dispose of later, but I do know a couple. You'll get responses arguing how the filters are degradable now so it's no big deal when in truth it would be much less of a big deal if people just didn't toss them willy nilly.
  - jtokoph 6mo ago
    I think that’s how many were actually found over the limited testing areas. You would need to multiply by the testing area ratio
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
- ortusdux 6mo ago
  r/burningman moop map shame thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/1rtzumg/moop_map_shame_thread/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/1rtzumg/moop_ma...
BergAndCo 6mo ago
[dead]
Worf 6mo ago
Is "plant matter" weed?
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  You think they’re leaving any of that behind?
- mrWiz 6mo ago
  Mostly no. Dead leaves that were just lying on a trailer without getting cleaned in advance and bits of decorative plants that broke off are probably the worst offenders.
  - quux 6mo ago
    Worth noting: Plants, living or dead, are banned from Burning Man because they turn into moop really easily, but some always end up there anyway
- Jarwain 6mo ago
  If it was that'd be an absurd amount of weed being left behind to make a mark on the map.
fontain 6mo ago
> In 2025, lag bolts were by far the biggest problem. They anchor tents, art pieces, and other infrastructure into the ground, and can easily disappear beneath the dust. I thought of a few potential solutions but then clicked through to the journal entry for last year and it turns out they're way ahead, the journal article is very interesting with some ideas: https://journal.burningman.org/2026/03/black-rock-city/leaving-no-trace/moop-map-2025/ https://journal.burningman.org/2026/03/black-rock-city/leavi...
- s0rce 6mo ago
  Marking whiskers, as mentioned, seem like a good solution if you can keep them attached. They are designed to be easily visible on the ground.
  - red_admiral 6mo ago
    As long as they really stay attached and don't come apart, otherwise you're now creating plastic debris.
- Jarwain 6mo ago
  My camp, while doing our moop sweep in 2023, found lag bolts from prior years! 2023 was a weird one, because of the heavy rain and so many people not being used to it. But it also seriously churned the Playa, revealing what was hidden for a whiiile
gorfian_robot 6mo ago
the moop map used to be a analog creation with pics of it uploaded every day of the resto(ration) process. some years ago they switched to digital tools and now they don't release it for several months after the event. huh.
- actionfromafar 6mo ago
  I want to know more about this analog upload! :-)
- dekdrop 6mo ago
  what sort of tool they use?
- stonegray 6mo ago
  The analog version still exists, and gets hand updated every day (though we don’t upload photos). You can visit it the following year at the appropriately named camp, Moop Map.
rdl 6mo ago
If the issue are tent stakes/lag bolts which get buried under surface, clear solution would be metal detectors available to borrow/rent (or brought by each camp). Also probably could do a drone or ground robot with a metal detecting loop on the bottom.
- wffurr 6mo ago
  Or just count them before and after. Know how many you're supposed to bring home.
- Jarwain 6mo ago
  The problem isn't that there aren't solutions, the problem is getting everyone on board
- raldi 6mo ago
  The best solution I know of is to get three-link segments of chain and put one on each screw as it goes into the ground. That not only marks the spot, it also gives you a flexible attachment point which is useful in all sorts of situations. (Two links would be pinned in a stationary fashion.) Biggest problem is it’s a pain in the ass to chop up all that chain, and nobody sells them in pre-cut lengths.
  - brotchie 6mo ago
    Closest I've been to losing vision in one eye was creating these 3x chain links for Burning Man. Naive thought: I could use a large bolt cutter to cut chain links. Started trying to cut a link, felt it was sketchy, went and put on some safety glasses. Restart cutting (had these bolt cutters with like 1m long arms), apply full force, jaws slip a bit on the chain, jaws bite hard. Chunks of steel fly into my chin and face, metal chunks embedded in chin, cracked safety glasses. Dodged a bullet. Ended using a small welded up jig so I could stretch the chain and then use angle grinder to cut the chain links. Still sketchy, but no flying metal chunks. Wish I had a plasma cutter.
    - raldi 6mo ago
zootboy 6mo ago
Sounds to me like there ought to be a MOOP cleanup deposit charged upfront, that only gets returned after this inspection. If the cleanup crew has to clean your site, you forfeit part or all of your deposit. Repeat offenders get charged increased deposits each time. Repeat inoffenders(?) get their deposit reduced.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  Seems likely this would result in a lot of disputes over windblown debris and neighbors dumping their stuff on your spot after you leave.
  - lkbm 6mo ago
    This is definitely a concern. We've pretty much always been green, but it's hard to police after you leave, and usually we're gone before Temple Burn. (One year two of our camp mates stayed for Temple Burn and they ended up having to pack out two extra bikes that got dumped, in addition to having to deal with multiple people trying to camp in our empty spot. Maybe those people would've been fine, but given that they didn't understand the open camping situation, I'm unsure they understood LNT either.)
- deleted 6mo ago
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- 0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
  This results in affluent people leaving all of their moop because they don't care about the deposit, which creates so much trash it requires a lot more staff and time to clean up. Existing system works: you clean up your moop because you're a good community member, shamed on Reddit if you don't, and if you're a problem multiple times, out you go.
  - zootboy 6mo ago
    > ...affluent people leaving all of their moop because they don't care about the deposit This is why I suggested an increasing deposit for repeat offenders. Leave a huge pile of trash? Next year's deposit is $100k. Do it several years in a row? $10MM deposit.
jobs_throwaway 6mo ago
Actually an enormous whitepill on Burning Man. Modest amounts of debris, real accountability, and improvement over time despite overall growth. You really can't ask for much more.
Waterluvian 6mo ago
I won't pretend I grok the underlying spirit of Burning Man. But I find it deeply fascinating to see the interaction between desires for counterculture, anarchy, free spirit, etc. and the benefit and ultimate necessity of organization, planning, rules... governance, essentially. And where there's those things, there's always maps and data.
- quux 6mo ago
  The natural tension between chaos and order is one of the things that makes Burning Man so interesting.
  - DonHopkins 6mo ago
    More like the natural tension between what you say and what you do.
- Jarwain 6mo ago
  Honestly, that contrast is what draws me in. In the same way ultralight hiking forces you to think about and let go of extraneous weight, going to Burning Man and doing the whole camp thing and seeing the city work showcases the "dead weight" of "making things happen".
- throwup238 6mo ago
  It’s fun to read everyone's preconceptions about Burning Man. Its ten principles are published [1] and include stuff like “radical inclusion” and “civic responsibility” and “gifting” (the latter of which is taken very literally, there is almost no currency use on the playa and everything is gifted except ice and coffee at center camp). Those principles tend to attract the kind of people associated with counterculture and anarchists, but it’s hardly representative, especially when you include the family zone and all the specialized camps. [1] https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/ https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/
  - niwtsol 6mo ago
    FYI - Coffee at center camp was canceled as of 2022
ruleryak 6mo ago
Last year was tough - it rained for hours 5 nights in a row and the first rain night was accompanied by 70 mile an hour winds that did a massive amount of damage to camp infrastructure throughout the city. The roads in half the city were ruined by emergency traffic that kept on running throughout the storms, and the result was a lumpy nightmare that shook things loose from cars and bikes at a much higher rate than most years. The mud absorbed and hid things and made cleanup a far more grueling process than it usually is. We endured and did our best to still find and remove everything - breaking up mud clumps and raking/sifting through the dirt at the end of the week to find all that embedded trash. There are no public trash cans, no event dumpsters, etc. I can say from having been there almost every year since 07 that this was by far the hardest year for "mooping" - the process of spotting and picking up any item that shouldn't be on the ground - but that the group mindset endured and we somehow still trended downward in terms of overall trash. I think the main difference between this and 2023 (the previous "mud burn") was that this time we had all the rain in the first half of the event, and then had relatively great weather for the second half. In 23, it closed out with the mud and people fleeing, leading to a spike.
- joenot443 6mo ago
  Yeah, last year we were calling it Building Man cause the first three days were just rebuilding the setup from the previous day's storm.
  - quux 6mo ago
    We called it "Continuous Improvement Man" because by the 3rd round of building our camp we had the process really dialed in
    - HoldOnAMinute 6mo ago
      Do you use the scrum methodology?
      - quux 6mo ago
swerner 6mo ago
If you think that’s dedication: I met Dominic (DA) who they interviewed in this article almost 20 years ago in the Spanish desert, where taught us Euroburners the art of MOOP cleanup. He’s been at it for a long time now.
- 4ggr0 6mo ago
  i've always felt like going to Burning Man, something just attracts me to it. but i'm a eurodude, going to the US just for a festival sounds idiotic and i currently don't want to visit the US anyways. are there similar events in europe? you sound like an experienced oldhead :)
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - swerner 6mo ago
    https://burningman.org/global-events-groups/ https://burningman.org/global-events-groups/
  - cosmojg 6mo ago
    Look up whatever regional burns[1] exist in your country or neighboring countries, and attend one of those. Ideally, join whatever online community exists around it first, and then reach out to some of the camps that interest you about joining and helping with whatever it is they like to do. I love Burning Man, but I can honestly say that I've had a lot more fun at my local regional burns than I've had at the big burn. [1] https://burnerguides.com/europe-burner-events https://burnerguides.com/europe-burner-events
    - 4ggr0 6mo ago
      oh wow, there's one in my country in a region which i've never visited but always wanted to go to, maybe that's a sign :D thanks!
- gorfian_robot 6mo ago
  his full nomenclature is "Dark Angel of the Playa"
topherPedersen 6mo ago
From my experience, people are pretty good about cleaning up. The first year I went I camped solo, so I theoretically could have left a bunch of crap, but I didn't. The second year I camped with a camp, and they were really thorough with check out and break down. We had a formal clean up of certain areas that I participated in where I remember people finding the tiniest things, like little pieces of thread and what not. And then when I personally went to leave, we had someone come and inspect my area and whatnot. So in my opinion, I think people do a pretty good job. And even if people didn't do a good job... we are not talking about a beautiful national park here, it is a desolate wasteland where literally no life can survive. I saw maybe ONE bug while I was out there. Not even bugs can survive out there. It's like the surface of the moon.
- donkers 6mo ago
  There’s a lot of fairy shrimp that live there and wait for the right conditions to come out. I think there’s a camp dedicated to them.
- theultdev 6mo ago
  It's not a wasteland. Plenty of insects live in the mud. Plus the pattern of the playa is special on its own. I honestly hate that burning man ruins the ground. Never the same after so many cars and people drive on it.
exabrial 6mo ago
Burning man is the biggest recurring environmental disaster purportated by humans in the name of entertainment. A place of pristine nature is literally destroyed by humans with zero fks given, in a manner where it can never be recovered from.
- IanGabes 6mo ago
  this is so far from the truth its baffling. in a year where the world cup is taking place, counter-examples are readily available in numbers. I doubt FIFA will be releasing environmental impact datasets...
- gleenn 6mo ago
  That seems pretty harsh. Have you been? If you go out after the rain has washed the playa flat again to hide the bike tracks through the soft powder, it looks like there has never been an event. As per the article, they do a fantastic job cleaning, unlike any event I've ever been too. Hardly "zero fks given", in fact quite a few were given and that's why we get to keep doing it.
- paintbox 6mo ago
  Read the posted article before commenting. It's literally written to refute your point.
- pkcoskfiwjfj 6mo ago
  Now this is some next-level “I didn’t read the article, have no context, and understand little to nothing about the subject matter” type of comment. I’m actually impressed.
- sonzohan 6mo ago
  > in the name of entertainment. Does the purpose change how the act should be interpreted? > A place of pristine nature is literally destroyed by humans with zero fks given Burners give so many fucks that we willingly do a thing historically reserved for punishment in the military (de-mooping) > in a manner where it can never be recovered from. Environmental sustainability is an actual goal not just greenwashing. I encourage you too look into Playa Resto https://journal.burningman.org/2022/10/black-rock-city/leaving-no-trace/end-of-the-line-resto-wraps-it-up/ https://journal.burningman.org/2022/10/black-rock-city/leavi... and note that the term volunteer is used meaning these people don't get paid.
perarneng 6mo ago
70,000 people during a week. It would be interesting to compare this with some other kind of event with the same duration and similar amount of people or perhaps make a grams of garbage per humanhour unit
- siren2026 6mo ago
  I went to an AMC Theatre last week and amazingly the room was absolutely trashed after the movie. For only maybe 25 people in the room. Concert two weeks ago, same thing. The venue was full of garbaghe. It is really amazing how great most burtners are about those principles. For my camp at least we spend a solid 3 or 4 hours before leaving to rake our whole area and make sure we don't leave anything behind. Most people do the same.
dmarcos 6mo ago
I was part of the temple build last year and cleanup is extremely serious. We spent two days cleaning after the burn with magnetic rakes looking for minute pieces of metal. We take samples of dirt at different spots and count the number of MOOP fragments to measure progress
schindlabua 6mo ago
Austria is a small country but festival-wise it does host a couple superlatives -- Donauinselfest as the largest festival in the world, Novarock being the largest rock festival depending on how you count. And then theres so many great other festivals in austria and the surrounding countries, big and small. People keep raving about burning man so I kind of want to go but I wonder whether I'd just be slightly disappointed. Or whether it's an american media influencing europeans thing where expectations become overinflated compared to what we have here.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- scottyah 6mo ago
  It's not a music festival like the ones you listed for starters, and while those are like an all-inclusive resort in that you just show up with money, Burning Man is more like camping in that you take everything there (and back).
  - schindlabua 6mo ago
    Nova Rock is mostly camping on and inhaling dry dirt, camping in and being covered in mud, not going to the toilet for 2-3 days, and eating canned food. But I hear you.
    - abaythrow 6mo ago
      As an Austrian living in the Bay Area and on my fourth burn and having been to Novarock and the Donauinselfest: it is very much not the same. BM is less a music festival than an immersive experience. For self-reliant folks, it is a delight. For others, hell. Try it out, see what it is for yourself.
- jumploops 6mo ago
  Burning Man isn’t really a festival, and you’ll likely have a bad time if you approach it that way. Many people seem to think it’s some hippy Woodstock or Coachella-esque event, but It’s more like an anarcho-punk temporary city, where your survival is in your own hands. American media loves to bash it, and Instagram influencers love to flaunt that they went, but it’s most certainly not for everybody. I don’t recommend going unless you do your research and really want to go. I’d also encourage any first-timers to go solo their first year.
yieldcrv 6mo ago
This is one principle and shared ethos done really well Burning Man would get a lot less criticism if they dropped their 22 year old principles out of its 40 year run Being part of a camp is the least inclusive social chore I’ve seen of any similar event, it is optional while making the “radically inclusive” trek a lot easier. Its a fairly high bar if you don't know the people “Radical Self Reliance” can be interpreted in completely opposite ways when convenient. The person mooching off of everyone may call that self reliance to themselves, not realizing they are just attractive, while the person “gifting” resources to be around the attractive person can withhold it under the edict of expecting radical self reliance. Its a desert, are people really more or less prepared because that principle is taking up space on a list of commandments? Larry Harvey didn’t expect people to make these things their whole identity. He was just having fun pontificating some guidelines in 2004. The guidelines-now-principles are also outdated. Many “Regional burns” that have been inspired by Burning Man have added additional principles more relevant to the times, such as ones focusing on consent and shared consent frameworks. Time for a new arc
justin 6mo ago
What I love about Burning Man is that it is an event where all the programming is created by the attendees. All the art, sound stages, art cars, experiences.. if you want something to exist in Black Rock City, then it is up to you to just go figure out how to bring it, solely for the benefit and joy of those who get to experience it. It is a tremendous amount of work, but the rewarding feeling of seeing your creation manifested into reality is worth it. So much of our daily lives in society is consuming experiences that other people create: the jobs we work are defined by other people, we buy products created by other people, we eat food made by other people. For me, Burning Man is a reminder for the rest of the year to be the creator of my own experience in the world.
- cma5 6mo ago
  fix oida
- jamwil 6mo ago
  “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” —Jobs
  - milkytron 6mo ago
    This, combined with the serenity prayer [0] have helped push me to try getting involved in fixing problems I never thought I'd be involved with. We can all make a positive difference in the world for those still living, and those who have yet to live. [0] God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
  - komali2 6mo ago
    That's an incredibly cynical thing for a man like Jobs to say, given his life, especially late in it, was mostly just ordering people to invent things, and then acting like a generational genius because the massive amount of people under his purview invented things.
yulia_dev_la 6mo ago
[flagged]
HoldOnAMinute 6mo ago
I wish I had gone before the billionaires discovered it
- dpc050505 6mo ago
  The small regionals don't attract billionaires, some even unaffiliated from the BMorg over certain billionaires being involved with it.
yellowapple 6mo ago
When I was a kid my stepdad was big into amateur rocketry, so we'd go to a lot of launches, including at Black Rock. One of them (could've swore it was LDRS, but given the timeline it would've had to have been XPRS or maybe BALLS) was at the same time that Burning Man's MOOP crew was doing their thing, and that was my exposure to how much work goes into preserving the playa for future users/visitors (including us). It's impressive to watch, even from long distance via binoculars. Of course the rocket launches have similar requirements, but they involve a lot fewer than 70,000 people (but on the other hand, a much larger area of potential litter, given that rockets fly far and sometimes don't come down in one piece). I live in Reno nowadays, and the locals either love or absolutely despise Burning Man, in the latter case for good reason: while Burning Man as an organization clearly cares a lot about “leave no trace” (as I've gotten to see firsthand), the Burners themselves have a tendency to leave pretty giant traces throughout Reno. A big one is bikes getting left behind (by people who don't want to deal with a bike caked in excruciating-to-fully-clean playa dust), and there's a whole supply chain of companies here that'll find those dumped bikes (or encourage Burners to bring them directly), clean 'em up, fix 'em up, and resell them (often back to Burners the following year; rinse and repeat). A lot of other, less-lucrative-to-refurbish-and-resell stuff unfortunately ends up clogging up every dumpster in town.
vonneumannstan 6mo ago
Burning Man is just polyamarous glamping for the Coachella set...
bogometer 6mo ago
Thank you for not "mooping" around.
pratzc07 6mo ago
My respect for Burning Man just went up a lot.
stonegray 6mo ago
I’ve done this for a couple years now, cool to see it pop up here. I believe the scale is a touch larger; 3935 acres in 2025, plus a small amount outside the fence line. On the technical side, we not only log but photograph everything, down to each clump of toilet paper. We check our progress by doing hundreds of tests identical to what the BLM does, both ahead and behind our main crew; bagging up any debris to be photographed on green screens where the pixels are counted to ensure we’re under the 2.29×10^-3 percent limit. It’s a stupendous amount of walking, with no shade, a moop stick and a bucket. But it’s a hell of a feeling to be part of making sure we remain undefeated against an impossible task that the future of burning man depends on.
- swah 6mo ago
  Any kind of tech for this? Spreadsheets...?
  - stonegray 6mo ago
    We use tablets running custom software for everything
    - brcmthrowaway 6mo ago
      What tablets?
      - FernetBronco 6mo ago
        im not sure if that’s on my NDA but I’m comfortable saying it’s an ecosystem constrained decision, with much consideration owed to what kind of cases are available to keep the conductive and corrosive dust off the screen and ports
- GaunterODimm 6mo ago
  Have you tried any computer vision for automatic categorisation? Happy to take a look into the data if helps.
yulia_dev_la 6mo ago
[flagged]
AcerbicZero 6mo ago
Is there anything more "Burning Man" than taking something we've been doing for decades (A FOD walk), giving it a worse name, and bragging about it on some random blog? I mean, hats off, the author really did nail it. This is as honest as I've ever seen BM get, and the juxtaposition of the unintentionally contrasted with the title makes it even better.
louthy 6mo ago
The leave-no-trace aspect of Burning Man is one of my favourite parts of the event. I've been 10 times in my life, I haven't been for a few years, the trek from the UK is a bit much sometimes! But each time I go to a UK festival I'm always reminded of how bad it would be if leave-no-trace was not a thing. It sickens me seeing the rubbish just strewn everywhere and, at the end of a festival, tents and general piles of waste left "for someone else to deal with". Burning Man is a real breath of fresh air from that viewpoint and seeing everyone (pretty much) adhere to it is pretty special. Individually you take responsibility, not just for your own mess, but if you see MOOP, you clean it up regardless of who made it. It's not somebody else's problem, it's ours. Seeing the camp MOOP report is always pleasing (obviously if you take the cleanup seriously, as most do).
ChrisMarshallNY 6mo ago
I've never heard of this blog, but it's great. Glad to hear of it. I wonder if one of the reasons for the improvement is the "corprotization" of the event. From what I hear, people are increasingly showing up with prefab shelters, or the VIP tents probably have entire cleanup crews. Not like the old "a couple of stoners with a lean-to" kind of thing that probably featured heavily, in the old days.
- lordalch 6mo ago
  Burning Man itself does not sell VIP tickets. Since 2022, the organization has significantly pushed back against camps trying to package and sell "VIP packages" by restricting them from getting early setup passes, water deliveries, trailer & intermodal container delivery, etc. Without those support services, the model has become pretty unattractive. Also, Burning Man is very intentional about its culture, with de-commodification as one of its main principles. The spotlight that got put on this issue a few years ago has really pushed these camps out, as of 2025. As far as housing, most people sleep in tents, including specialized dome tents with reflective coating for the heat, but those are still essentially tents. Others sleep in RVs/trailers/vehicles. There isn't anyone building a condo tower in the desert.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6mo ago
    Thanks. Good to know. Not something I was ever involved in, but knew a few people that went. They seemed to do it “the right way.” I just know a number of tech bros, and it’s difficult to reconcile what I know of them, and “roughing it.” The stories I heard about VIP tents, aligned a lot more with my observations.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
kazinator 6mo ago
I bet you there would be far less MOOP if a spot at Burning Man didn't cost so much money. When people pay hundreds of dollars, entitlement tends to creep in. They tend to regard themselves less as a participant and more as a customer. "I'm not sweeping my spot look for a tiny screw; I paid hundreds of dollars to be here; I'm packing up in the most convenient way to me and getting the heck out." Of course, that depends on personality, outlook and circumstances. Given enough people, you get lots of variety in these parameters.
- readthenotes1 6mo ago
  The whole event is one of excessive entitlement...
- stackghost 6mo ago
  Years ago it was truly countercultural but now it's just a place for multimillionaires to come, sit in the air conditioning, oogle the Instagram/tiktok influencer girls, and talk about how money just, like, doesn't matter, man.
- NickNaraghi 6mo ago
  Doesn’t sound like you’ve been there
  - DonHopkins 6mo ago
    Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Elizabeth Holmes, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt have been there. Ask them how much trash they left behind or cleaned up. I bet Jeff Bezos didn't carry out all his urine in plastic bottles with his private jet.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - FernetBronco 6mo ago
    I’ve been to regional events, and it’s absolutely true that $90 tickets awarded to last years volunteers moop less than $550 face
joshfraser 6mo ago
Reinforcement training. Camps that leave too much moop don't get invited back.
m463 6mo ago
People do high-speed driving on the smooth lakebed. Encountering a lag bolt might be quite dangerous.
ghostly_s 6mo ago
infamous: adjective 1. Having an exceedingly bad reputation; notorious. "an infamous outlaw." 2. Causing or deserving severe public condemnation; heinous.
- CobrastanJorji 6mo ago
  Yeah, they knew what it meant.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
nikanj 6mo ago
The real moop map is the absolute mountain of unsorted garbage that gets dumped at the first rest stop / dumpster / trash can. Yeah cool you did not leave your plastic trinkets in the desert, but you did leave all of it next to the trash can on your first gas break
fsckboy 6mo ago
That MOOP map is overlaid on top of the actual Burning Man POOP map: all those attendees who stream to the desert from their urbanized homes? they are People Out Of Place, and eradicating them and all the carbon footprints they leave would completely eliminate the MOOP problem while also generating positive externalities.
arian_ 6mo ago
An event built on radical self-reliance now needs a public shame map to keep people honest. Every community that scales past the point where trust works eventually reinvents compliance.
- andrewflnr 6mo ago
  Sort of. The "compliance" here is just transmitting pressure applied by the regular, boring, government. But certainly the cleanup would not happen without serious pressure from somewhere.
- Daishiman 6mo ago
  The process of setting up a camp for the first few times and attempting new art installations is positively gargantuan. There are a lot of considerations happening and MOOP is just one of them. Unless you expect people to get camps and installations right the first time, you need this.
Animats 6mo ago
There's a machine for this, and you can rent it - the Barber Litter Picker.[1] It's a large tractor-pulled machine, like an agricultural implement. It's a variation on their Surf Rake, which is used for beach cleanup. The Litter Picker is built for dirt, hard ground, grass, and pavement. It's used for large outdoor festivals. Scoops up everything from cigarette butts to lawn chairs. Video of cleanup after a big festival.[2] Big festivals are cleaned up in a few hours with this heavy equipment. [1] https://www.hbarber.com/litter-collection-equipment/litter-picker/applications/festival-cleanup-machine/ https://www.hbarber.com/litter-collection-equipment/litter-p... [2] https://videos.files.wordpress.com/IxQgz6Oo/lp-concert-jiffy-lube-virginia-vid.mp4 https://videos.files.wordpress.com/IxQgz6Oo/lp-concert-jiffy...
- beAbU 6mo ago
  Did you read the full article? The whole point of the manual cleanup duty is the meticulous mapping of MOOP. This information is used by the community to learn and improve for next time. This has resulted in measurable improvement over the years, despite the event growing massively in size during that time. I feel a big commercial machine that cleans the site up in a couple of hours will result in a community that does not espouse the 'leave no trace' principle. Because why would you care? A big machine is going to clean it all up anyway.
  - Animats 6mo ago
    Right, needs a drone pass for mapping before and after cleaning. Needing 150 people for weeks to clean up is too labor-intensive. Are they paid?
    - sevg 6mo ago
      You’ve missed the point. This is a cultural commitment not a logistics problem to engineer away. The person you replied to did kindly try to explain to you, but you seem to have ignored it. If you don’t understand the culture of Burning Man, that’s fine. But maybe don’t callously reduce 150 peoples’ labor of love to “btw just use this machine”.
jh00ker 6mo ago
Kind of crazy this is so successful, considering it's hosted in a country where it's the norm for (so many, but not all) people to leave their bags of popcorn and cups of soda at their seats when they leave the movie theatre or ball game, under the assumption, "someone else will take care of it."
- giarc 6mo ago
  But that's all based on societal norms. It's kind of understood (whether it's right or not) to leave popcorn etc under your seat at a theatre or a stadium. At Burning Man, it's obviously not acceptable.
reubenlavin 6mo ago
Hearing all the issues with lug bolts in the ground I'm curious whether metal detectors were used during cleanup.
infrapilot 6mo ago
[flagged]
askbjoernhansen 6mo ago
Nice to see el pulpo magnifico's camp be spotless on the mini-map in the blog post.
pocksuppet 6mo ago
I'm not going to be Gell-Mann Amnesiated. At least not without calling it out. > Marblelous music. Wintergatan is a quirky instrument that relies heavily on marbles to make music. It's beautiful to watch, and doesn't sound anything like you expect. No. Wintergatan is the artist name of the guy who made and played the instrument. > The infinite buffalo sentence. It's a grammatically correct sentence, using just the word buffalo. The video explanation benefits from some useful visuals, but you'll still probably hate this. Or absolutely love it. There's definitely no middle ground here. The visual below this point is completely useless and does not explain how to make an infinite sentence.
Scroll_Swe 6mo ago
Is burning man still the hot cool rich tech thing or have you people moved on? I think the next upswing will be forests, lakes and such.
glemmaPaul 6mo ago
Isnt Burning Man known to destroy the Microbial Life inside the mud bedding of the festival location?
qmslkdjf 6mo ago
This looks nice, but Burning Man’s “Leave No Trace” reputation doesn’t seem to hold up when you look at what is actually left behind. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoOd0It_1Tc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoOd0It_1Tc) reports trash dumping in Reno and along the highway, burn scars and soil damage left on the playa, a cleanup that leaves debris visibly behind and an inspection process that borders on corrupt. Additionally, the people behind the camera are being intimidated and harassed on public grounds, even though the permit to close the had expired. Even the local police seems to ignore this fact and just do whatever they are told by the Burning Man crew.
- stonegray 6mo ago
  The playa flooded that year so we started late and were still working when the closure expired. A video of us working claiming that’s how we left it is disingenuous; otherwise what are we still doing there? In a way it’s proof that we did in fact leave it clean; anybody doing a hit piece like that would 100% have included video of post-resto trash if they were able to find any.
fssys 6mo ago
it is quite on the nose that they have this quirky sf-tech-bro coded word for "waste" or "litter". Hey I've got this crazy idea, what if instead of cars we all rode in one big car and it had metal wheels and roads to reduce friction... it's only at Burning Man you can find people with big ideas like this
NoSalt 6mo ago
I would love to see a listing of some of the more interesting Burning Man clean-up finds.

767 points by speckx 6mo ago

So a giant party can clean up after itself, but 4th of July in Tahoe for example is a toxic mess. I wish more people would practice these principles. It’s impressive how well this is cleaned up.

phillmv 6mo ago
it helps that there's a regulatory agency that verifies the cleanup happened! if the 4th of july might get canceled the following year ppl might be more aggressive around cleaning up.
- pstuart 6mo ago
  Participants also have to feel like they are part of the event rather than passive spectators.
  - socalgal2 6mo ago
    Do they? Japanese clean up after themselves when they fill the parks at cherry blossom season or a fireworks festival. Seems like you just need to feel responsible for yourself
    - dghlsakjg 6mo ago
      Most people clean up after themselves, even in hyper individualist America. The Japanese clean up after everyone including the shitty few who don't clean up after themselves.
      - socalgal2 6mo ago
        no my experience. Go see a public park in Japan on weekend at the beginning of April. Every portion of the park will be covered in people. At the end of the day they'll all go home and the park will be mostly clean except for the garbage collection area. Compare that to USA, Go to the National Mall (the grass in DC) on the 4th of July. See it's covered in people. Check on the 5th of July. The entire place will be covered in trash and refuse.
        dghlsakjg 6mo ago
        That isn’t in contradiction to what I said. It is further evidence of my argument. If 2% of the people on the mall on the 4th don’t clean up after themselves and the 98% don’t pick up the slack, it will be disgusting, even if 98% of the people are responsible for their own trash. Americans draw a hard line on trash that is theirs and trash that isn’t. Japanese do not. My theory is that in Japan people see it as their responsibility to clean up, regardless of who made the mess. In the west, most people are only concerned with their own mess.
    - komali2 6mo ago
      Could be because people growing up in Japan are taught that they're an intrinsic part of any place, event, or group of people that includes their presence. Kids in classrooms in Japan are helping clean up together with everyone else at age 4. It's kinda the opposite of "responsible for yourself," it's a civic sense that extends to include everyone and everything around you - including things that weren't directly caused by you-as-individal. In the case of the cherry blossoms, they were planted for the enjoyment of the people, and thus the people who come to enjoy them are a part of that system. The cherry blossom viewing events where thousands of people come to picnic, only is a "thing" because thousands of people come - everyone there is a participant by virtue of attending. Thus they hold part of the responsibility for the outcome of the event and the aftermath.
browningstreet 6mo ago
There are volunteer opportunities to help clean-up after the 4th of July festivities in Tahoe.
gosub100 6mo ago
The giant party just dumps their trash in the Reno Sparks area on the way home. Search for burning man at /r/Reno if you don't believe me
- rickharrison 6mo ago
  This 100%. They only care about their playa. As soon as they are off, their considerations go out the window and they trash every other town they want to.
- donkers 6mo ago
  There are some shitty Burners and those cause the most visible problems, but there are a lot of conscientious ones too (I think it’s the majority of them). Painting them all with the same brush isn’t quite right, a lot of us work hard to do things the right way (like spending hours in line to pay to dump trash at the Reno municipal transfer station). I don’t know how to get the shitty ones to do the right thing though, besides lots of public shaming. It’s hard to avoid having any jerks in a city of 70K people.
  - gosub100 6mo ago
    > I don’t know how to get the shitty ones to do the right thing though, I know. Use the $600/person or whatever cost is now to have trash service out there. Ever think of that?
    - donkers 6mo ago
      Yes, and it kinda defeats the purpose. The event is in large part about personal responsibility and accountability. Adding trash service out there would make it even easier for people to bring more than they need, consume more, leave shit everywhere, etc. And that money is already used for existing services and the BLM permit paid to the government, it's not like it's just sitting there ready to be spent on trash services. And at that point, increasing ticket prices makes it more inaccessible to people, and then cue the complaints that it's an event for such-and-such rich people blah blah whatever.
stouset 6mo ago
Which makes it even more infuriating to me when people use the MOOP map as evidence that burners leave trash everywhere and destroy the desert every year. It’s certainly worse than not having the event in the first place, but it is quite literally better about garbage than any large scale gathering on the planet. Burners do still need to be better about leaving their trash in Reno, but even with that it’s hard to see how it’s not monumentally better than virtually anything else.
- saila 6mo ago
  If I understand correctly, you're saying that leaving trash in Reno is bad, not that that's what people should do? I first read your comment as saying that people should leave their trash in Reno, but a sibling comment makes me think it's the opposite.
  - stouset 6mo ago
    Sorry, yes, I should have made that clearer. Burners should as a whole be better about [the fact that they] just dump their trash in Reno on the way out. It’s an enormous problem, and completely indefensible particularly given the number of cheap trash collection sites you drive past on the way out. Still, by comparison, burners are practically saints. Going back to the event itself, I attended Lightning in a Bottle once. I was absolutely disgusted at the end of it. Entire camps quite literally just left, abandoning everything. Brand new equipment and the boxes it was sold in just left for others to deal with. And not just isolated groups either, people had done this absolutely everywhere.
  - ashdksnndck 6mo ago
    To be clear, what you’re supposed to do is dump your trash in places you’re allowed to dump it. If you have a lot of trash, most economical option is often to go to the public transfer stations or landfills in the Reno area (but that only works if they are open). Also, there are services on the side of the highway that accept trash for $N per bag. Only give your trash to someone if you can see the dumpster it’s going into and the dumpster is not full. There have been scams where people charged to accept trash and then just left it there to get blown around the desert. Alternatively, you could drive your trash all the way home and let your local utilities handle it. But when I’ve had my cargo trailer piled with leaking garbage bags I’ve wanted to get rid of it ASAP.
aaron695 6mo ago
[dead]
seb1204 6mo ago
Japanese visitors were applauded for cleaning up after themselves in the stadium. So it is an attitude thing too.
Litost 6mo ago
Much as I love Glastonbury festival, even though I stopped going a few years back, the amount of waste generated definitely seems problematic. I think the festival does a great job of trying to deal with this problem, from the large number of lovingly decorated bins, through to all the site clearup teams both during and after and all the messaging. But as highlighted elsewhere, it's definitely more of a cultural problem than anything. It's always depressing just casually observing the amount of abandoned tents on the way out and the amount of litter either put in the wrong recycling bins or just discarded less than yards from them. And the problems isn't just the cost which could be spent on good causes - £750,000+ [0] but the accidental effect of say a cow eating a tent peg (it's a working farm). As someone who litter picks and talks to litter picking groups it's definitely a big problem nationwide sadly. Probably unsurprisngly this always seems to be much worse in the higher traffic areas with the main stages than it is in say the Green or Healing field areas though their might be demographic and contextual reasons for that also. I've not been to any of the other main UK festivals in a long time, e.g. Reading, V Festival etc. but I'm guessing they aren't going to be any better? [0] - https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife/glastonbury-festival-clean-up-how-7260772 https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife/glas...
- berkes 6mo ago
  > It's always depressing just casually observing the amount of abandoned tents on the way out Not just tents, but all sorts of camping gear, carts, clothes, food, gimmics, and so on. Many in good condition. Aside from the waste having to be cleared, it's very wasteful to throw away good stuff. I am convinced this is a cultural problem indeed. Stuff like a tent or a gas-burner is cheap. Cheap compared to what it cost (in % of monthly income) decades ago, and cheap compared to the ticket and other spendings on that festival. The cost of a tent (or the costs of some cans of food, some shirts, a funny hat, an inflatable flamingo, a chair) is nothing on the total bill of a festival. That new tent you bought, costs about as much as that beer you spilled when you bumped into that drunk dude. So, purely economically, it makes sense to just leave it behind. Why carry your (now dirty) tent, food, cloths, etc home, when you can leave it, have a more pleasant return trip, and just buy new stuff next year. I think this is a very good analogy for why we are unable to stop ruining the world in an ever increasing pace.

soared 6mo ago

Imagine if environmental regulation, pollution, etc looked like this.

ceejayoz 6mo ago
This is an environmental regulatory requirement by the Federal Bureau of Land Management.
- john_strinlai 6mo ago
  for the curios or those that skipped over it: "Black Rock City is only allowed to return to the playa each year if it passes a strict post-event inspection from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM): No more than one square foot of debris can remain per acre (0.23 m²/ha)."
  - Scoundreller 6mo ago
    K, but what’s a square foot in metric? And percent would be better here. Or per Mille to be annoying.
    - Sardtok 6mo ago
      Read it again, it says right there in square metres.
      - hk__2 6mo ago
        Isn’t it strange to mesure this in surface rather than volume?
        Jarwain 6mo ago
        Not much difference between a 12" and a 18" lag bolt for the purpose of "how much trash is visible and impacts terrain". Surface feels a bit fairer in that sense. Or at least, easier to measure.

cmiles8 6mo ago

My respect for Burning Man just went up a lot. These big events usually leave a giant mess behind. Glad to see they take the cleanup and restoration so seriously.

quux 6mo ago
To paraphrase Captain Malcom Reynolds: "My days of not taking Burning Man seriously are definitely coming to a middle."
testing22321 6mo ago
I’d have a lot more respect and the whole thing would be a hell of a lot easier if each person just picked up after themselves and there was no herculean cleanup required

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

charles_f 6mo ago

> its release inevitably fuels a bit of public finger-pointing Is this what's helping with that? > the most striking trend is that the community has steadily improved at Leave No Trace Probably not only? But shame and avoidance of shame can be good motivation

BergAndCo 6mo ago

[dead]

john_strinlai 6mo ago

the full map image for 2025: https://webassets.burningman.org/largeimages/MOOP_Map_2025_03.09.26.jpg https://webassets.burningman.org/largeimages/MOOP_Map_2025_0...

dylan604 6mo ago
Only 146 cigarette butts? That's amazingly much lower than I would have expected.
- wnissen 6mo ago
  That's not just amazing, it's inconceivable! I can go on a hike on almost any trail in the SF Bay Area and pick up a half dozen in a couple hours.
  - dylan604 6mo ago
    Yeah, that was where I was coming from. I know very few people that stub out their ciggy and then put the butt in the pocket to dispose of later, but I do know a couple. You'll get responses arguing how the filters are degradable now so it's no big deal when in truth it would be much less of a big deal if people just didn't toss them willy nilly.
- jtokoph 6mo ago
  I think that’s how many were actually found over the limited testing areas. You would need to multiply by the testing area ratio
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
ortusdux 6mo ago
r/burningman moop map shame thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/1rtzumg/moop_map_shame_thread/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/1rtzumg/moop_ma...

BergAndCo 6mo ago

[dead]

Worf 6mo ago

Is "plant matter" weed?

ceejayoz 6mo ago
You think they’re leaving any of that behind?
mrWiz 6mo ago
Mostly no. Dead leaves that were just lying on a trailer without getting cleaned in advance and bits of decorative plants that broke off are probably the worst offenders.
- quux 6mo ago
  Worth noting: Plants, living or dead, are banned from Burning Man because they turn into moop really easily, but some always end up there anyway
Jarwain 6mo ago
If it was that'd be an absurd amount of weed being left behind to make a mark on the map.

fontain 6mo ago

> In 2025, lag bolts were by far the biggest problem. They anchor tents, art pieces, and other infrastructure into the ground, and can easily disappear beneath the dust. I thought of a few potential solutions but then clicked through to the journal entry for last year and it turns out they're way ahead, the journal article is very interesting with some ideas: https://journal.burningman.org/2026/03/black-rock-city/leaving-no-trace/moop-map-2025/ https://journal.burningman.org/2026/03/black-rock-city/leavi...

s0rce 6mo ago
Marking whiskers, as mentioned, seem like a good solution if you can keep them attached. They are designed to be easily visible on the ground.
- red_admiral 6mo ago
  As long as they really stay attached and don't come apart, otherwise you're now creating plastic debris.
Jarwain 6mo ago
My camp, while doing our moop sweep in 2023, found lag bolts from prior years! 2023 was a weird one, because of the heavy rain and so many people not being used to it. But it also seriously churned the Playa, revealing what was hidden for a whiiile

gorfian_robot 6mo ago

the moop map used to be a analog creation with pics of it uploaded every day of the resto(ration) process. some years ago they switched to digital tools and now they don't release it for several months after the event. huh.

actionfromafar 6mo ago
I want to know more about this analog upload! :-)
dekdrop 6mo ago
what sort of tool they use?
stonegray 6mo ago
The analog version still exists, and gets hand updated every day (though we don’t upload photos). You can visit it the following year at the appropriately named camp, Moop Map.

rdl 6mo ago

If the issue are tent stakes/lag bolts which get buried under surface, clear solution would be metal detectors available to borrow/rent (or brought by each camp). Also probably could do a drone or ground robot with a metal detecting loop on the bottom.

wffurr 6mo ago
Or just count them before and after. Know how many you're supposed to bring home.
Jarwain 6mo ago
The problem isn't that there aren't solutions, the problem is getting everyone on board
raldi 6mo ago
The best solution I know of is to get three-link segments of chain and put one on each screw as it goes into the ground. That not only marks the spot, it also gives you a flexible attachment point which is useful in all sorts of situations. (Two links would be pinned in a stationary fashion.) Biggest problem is it’s a pain in the ass to chop up all that chain, and nobody sells them in pre-cut lengths.
- brotchie 6mo ago
  Closest I've been to losing vision in one eye was creating these 3x chain links for Burning Man. Naive thought: I could use a large bolt cutter to cut chain links. Started trying to cut a link, felt it was sketchy, went and put on some safety glasses. Restart cutting (had these bolt cutters with like 1m long arms), apply full force, jaws slip a bit on the chain, jaws bite hard. Chunks of steel fly into my chin and face, metal chunks embedded in chin, cracked safety glasses. Dodged a bullet. Ended using a small welded up jig so I could stretch the chain and then use angle grinder to cut the chain links. Still sketchy, but no flying metal chunks. Wish I had a plasma cutter.
  - raldi 6mo ago

zootboy 6mo ago

Sounds to me like there ought to be a MOOP cleanup deposit charged upfront, that only gets returned after this inspection. If the cleanup crew has to clean your site, you forfeit part or all of your deposit. Repeat offenders get charged increased deposits each time. Repeat inoffenders(?) get their deposit reduced.

ceejayoz 6mo ago
Seems likely this would result in a lot of disputes over windblown debris and neighbors dumping their stuff on your spot after you leave.
- lkbm 6mo ago
  This is definitely a concern. We've pretty much always been green, but it's hard to police after you leave, and usually we're gone before Temple Burn. (One year two of our camp mates stayed for Temple Burn and they ended up having to pack out two extra bikes that got dumped, in addition to having to deal with multiple people trying to camp in our empty spot. Maybe those people would've been fine, but given that they didn't understand the open camping situation, I'm unsure they understood LNT either.)
deleted 6mo ago
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0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
This results in affluent people leaving all of their moop because they don't care about the deposit, which creates so much trash it requires a lot more staff and time to clean up. Existing system works: you clean up your moop because you're a good community member, shamed on Reddit if you don't, and if you're a problem multiple times, out you go.
- zootboy 6mo ago
  > ...affluent people leaving all of their moop because they don't care about the deposit This is why I suggested an increasing deposit for repeat offenders. Leave a huge pile of trash? Next year's deposit is $100k. Do it several years in a row? $10MM deposit.

jobs_throwaway 6mo ago

Actually an enormous whitepill on Burning Man. Modest amounts of debris, real accountability, and improvement over time despite overall growth. You really can't ask for much more.

Waterluvian 6mo ago

I won't pretend I grok the underlying spirit of Burning Man. But I find it deeply fascinating to see the interaction between desires for counterculture, anarchy, free spirit, etc. and the benefit and ultimate necessity of organization, planning, rules... governance, essentially. And where there's those things, there's always maps and data.

quux 6mo ago
The natural tension between chaos and order is one of the things that makes Burning Man so interesting.
- DonHopkins 6mo ago
  More like the natural tension between what you say and what you do.
Jarwain 6mo ago
Honestly, that contrast is what draws me in. In the same way ultralight hiking forces you to think about and let go of extraneous weight, going to Burning Man and doing the whole camp thing and seeing the city work showcases the "dead weight" of "making things happen".
throwup238 6mo ago
It’s fun to read everyone's preconceptions about Burning Man. Its ten principles are published [1] and include stuff like “radical inclusion” and “civic responsibility” and “gifting” (the latter of which is taken very literally, there is almost no currency use on the playa and everything is gifted except ice and coffee at center camp). Those principles tend to attract the kind of people associated with counterculture and anarchists, but it’s hardly representative, especially when you include the family zone and all the specialized camps. [1] https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/ https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/
- niwtsol 6mo ago
  FYI - Coffee at center camp was canceled as of 2022

ruleryak 6mo ago

Last year was tough - it rained for hours 5 nights in a row and the first rain night was accompanied by 70 mile an hour winds that did a massive amount of damage to camp infrastructure throughout the city. The roads in half the city were ruined by emergency traffic that kept on running throughout the storms, and the result was a lumpy nightmare that shook things loose from cars and bikes at a much higher rate than most years. The mud absorbed and hid things and made cleanup a far more grueling process than it usually is. We endured and did our best to still find and remove everything - breaking up mud clumps and raking/sifting through the dirt at the end of the week to find all that embedded trash. There are no public trash cans, no event dumpsters, etc. I can say from having been there almost every year since 07 that this was by far the hardest year for "mooping" - the process of spotting and picking up any item that shouldn't be on the ground - but that the group mindset endured and we somehow still trended downward in terms of overall trash. I think the main difference between this and 2023 (the previous "mud burn") was that this time we had all the rain in the first half of the event, and then had relatively great weather for the second half. In 23, it closed out with the mud and people fleeing, leading to a spike.

joenot443 6mo ago
Yeah, last year we were calling it Building Man cause the first three days were just rebuilding the setup from the previous day's storm.
- quux 6mo ago
  We called it "Continuous Improvement Man" because by the 3rd round of building our camp we had the process really dialed in
  - HoldOnAMinute 6mo ago
    Do you use the scrum methodology?
    - quux 6mo ago

swerner 6mo ago

If you think that’s dedication: I met Dominic (DA) who they interviewed in this article almost 20 years ago in the Spanish desert, where taught us Euroburners the art of MOOP cleanup. He’s been at it for a long time now.

4ggr0 6mo ago
i've always felt like going to Burning Man, something just attracts me to it. but i'm a eurodude, going to the US just for a festival sounds idiotic and i currently don't want to visit the US anyways. are there similar events in europe? you sound like an experienced oldhead :)
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- swerner 6mo ago
  https://burningman.org/global-events-groups/ https://burningman.org/global-events-groups/
- cosmojg 6mo ago
  Look up whatever regional burns[1] exist in your country or neighboring countries, and attend one of those. Ideally, join whatever online community exists around it first, and then reach out to some of the camps that interest you about joining and helping with whatever it is they like to do. I love Burning Man, but I can honestly say that I've had a lot more fun at my local regional burns than I've had at the big burn. [1] https://burnerguides.com/europe-burner-events https://burnerguides.com/europe-burner-events
  - 4ggr0 6mo ago
    oh wow, there's one in my country in a region which i've never visited but always wanted to go to, maybe that's a sign :D thanks!
gorfian_robot 6mo ago
his full nomenclature is "Dark Angel of the Playa"

topherPedersen 6mo ago

From my experience, people are pretty good about cleaning up. The first year I went I camped solo, so I theoretically could have left a bunch of crap, but I didn't. The second year I camped with a camp, and they were really thorough with check out and break down. We had a formal clean up of certain areas that I participated in where I remember people finding the tiniest things, like little pieces of thread and what not. And then when I personally went to leave, we had someone come and inspect my area and whatnot. So in my opinion, I think people do a pretty good job. And even if people didn't do a good job... we are not talking about a beautiful national park here, it is a desolate wasteland where literally no life can survive. I saw maybe ONE bug while I was out there. Not even bugs can survive out there. It's like the surface of the moon.

donkers 6mo ago
There’s a lot of fairy shrimp that live there and wait for the right conditions to come out. I think there’s a camp dedicated to them.
theultdev 6mo ago
It's not a wasteland. Plenty of insects live in the mud. Plus the pattern of the playa is special on its own. I honestly hate that burning man ruins the ground. Never the same after so many cars and people drive on it.

exabrial 6mo ago

Burning man is the biggest recurring environmental disaster purportated by humans in the name of entertainment. A place of pristine nature is literally destroyed by humans with zero fks given, in a manner where it can never be recovered from.

IanGabes 6mo ago
this is so far from the truth its baffling. in a year where the world cup is taking place, counter-examples are readily available in numbers. I doubt FIFA will be releasing environmental impact datasets...
gleenn 6mo ago
That seems pretty harsh. Have you been? If you go out after the rain has washed the playa flat again to hide the bike tracks through the soft powder, it looks like there has never been an event. As per the article, they do a fantastic job cleaning, unlike any event I've ever been too. Hardly "zero fks given", in fact quite a few were given and that's why we get to keep doing it.
paintbox 6mo ago
Read the posted article before commenting. It's literally written to refute your point.
pkcoskfiwjfj 6mo ago
Now this is some next-level “I didn’t read the article, have no context, and understand little to nothing about the subject matter” type of comment. I’m actually impressed.
sonzohan 6mo ago
> in the name of entertainment. Does the purpose change how the act should be interpreted? > A place of pristine nature is literally destroyed by humans with zero fks given Burners give so many fucks that we willingly do a thing historically reserved for punishment in the military (de-mooping) > in a manner where it can never be recovered from. Environmental sustainability is an actual goal not just greenwashing. I encourage you too look into Playa Resto https://journal.burningman.org/2022/10/black-rock-city/leaving-no-trace/end-of-the-line-resto-wraps-it-up/ https://journal.burningman.org/2022/10/black-rock-city/leavi... and note that the term volunteer is used meaning these people don't get paid.

perarneng 6mo ago

70,000 people during a week. It would be interesting to compare this with some other kind of event with the same duration and similar amount of people or perhaps make a grams of garbage per humanhour unit

siren2026 6mo ago
I went to an AMC Theatre last week and amazingly the room was absolutely trashed after the movie. For only maybe 25 people in the room. Concert two weeks ago, same thing. The venue was full of garbaghe. It is really amazing how great most burtners are about those principles. For my camp at least we spend a solid 3 or 4 hours before leaving to rake our whole area and make sure we don't leave anything behind. Most people do the same.

dmarcos 6mo ago

I was part of the temple build last year and cleanup is extremely serious. We spent two days cleaning after the burn with magnetic rakes looking for minute pieces of metal. We take samples of dirt at different spots and count the number of MOOP fragments to measure progress

schindlabua 6mo ago

Austria is a small country but festival-wise it does host a couple superlatives -- Donauinselfest as the largest festival in the world, Novarock being the largest rock festival depending on how you count. And then theres so many great other festivals in austria and the surrounding countries, big and small. People keep raving about burning man so I kind of want to go but I wonder whether I'd just be slightly disappointed. Or whether it's an american media influencing europeans thing where expectations become overinflated compared to what we have here.

deleted 6mo ago
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scottyah 6mo ago
It's not a music festival like the ones you listed for starters, and while those are like an all-inclusive resort in that you just show up with money, Burning Man is more like camping in that you take everything there (and back).
- schindlabua 6mo ago
  Nova Rock is mostly camping on and inhaling dry dirt, camping in and being covered in mud, not going to the toilet for 2-3 days, and eating canned food. But I hear you.
  - abaythrow 6mo ago
    As an Austrian living in the Bay Area and on my fourth burn and having been to Novarock and the Donauinselfest: it is very much not the same. BM is less a music festival than an immersive experience. For self-reliant folks, it is a delight. For others, hell. Try it out, see what it is for yourself.
jumploops 6mo ago
Burning Man isn’t really a festival, and you’ll likely have a bad time if you approach it that way. Many people seem to think it’s some hippy Woodstock or Coachella-esque event, but It’s more like an anarcho-punk temporary city, where your survival is in your own hands. American media loves to bash it, and Instagram influencers love to flaunt that they went, but it’s most certainly not for everybody. I don’t recommend going unless you do your research and really want to go. I’d also encourage any first-timers to go solo their first year.

yieldcrv 6mo ago

This is one principle and shared ethos done really well Burning Man would get a lot less criticism if they dropped their 22 year old principles out of its 40 year run Being part of a camp is the least inclusive social chore I’ve seen of any similar event, it is optional while making the “radically inclusive” trek a lot easier. Its a fairly high bar if you don't know the people “Radical Self Reliance” can be interpreted in completely opposite ways when convenient. The person mooching off of everyone may call that self reliance to themselves, not realizing they are just attractive, while the person “gifting” resources to be around the attractive person can withhold it under the edict of expecting radical self reliance. Its a desert, are people really more or less prepared because that principle is taking up space on a list of commandments? Larry Harvey didn’t expect people to make these things their whole identity. He was just having fun pontificating some guidelines in 2004. The guidelines-now-principles are also outdated. Many “Regional burns” that have been inspired by Burning Man have added additional principles more relevant to the times, such as ones focusing on consent and shared consent frameworks. Time for a new arc

justin 6mo ago

What I love about Burning Man is that it is an event where all the programming is created by the attendees. All the art, sound stages, art cars, experiences.. if you want something to exist in Black Rock City, then it is up to you to just go figure out how to bring it, solely for the benefit and joy of those who get to experience it. It is a tremendous amount of work, but the rewarding feeling of seeing your creation manifested into reality is worth it. So much of our daily lives in society is consuming experiences that other people create: the jobs we work are defined by other people, we buy products created by other people, we eat food made by other people. For me, Burning Man is a reminder for the rest of the year to be the creator of my own experience in the world.

cma5 6mo ago
fix oida
jamwil 6mo ago
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” —Jobs
- milkytron 6mo ago
  This, combined with the serenity prayer [0] have helped push me to try getting involved in fixing problems I never thought I'd be involved with. We can all make a positive difference in the world for those still living, and those who have yet to live. [0] God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
- komali2 6mo ago
  That's an incredibly cynical thing for a man like Jobs to say, given his life, especially late in it, was mostly just ordering people to invent things, and then acting like a generational genius because the massive amount of people under his purview invented things.

yulia_dev_la 6mo ago

[flagged]

HoldOnAMinute 6mo ago

I wish I had gone before the billionaires discovered it

dpc050505 6mo ago
The small regionals don't attract billionaires, some even unaffiliated from the BMorg over certain billionaires being involved with it.

yellowapple 6mo ago

When I was a kid my stepdad was big into amateur rocketry, so we'd go to a lot of launches, including at Black Rock. One of them (could've swore it was LDRS, but given the timeline it would've had to have been XPRS or maybe BALLS) was at the same time that Burning Man's MOOP crew was doing their thing, and that was my exposure to how much work goes into preserving the playa for future users/visitors (including us). It's impressive to watch, even from long distance via binoculars. Of course the rocket launches have similar requirements, but they involve a lot fewer than 70,000 people (but on the other hand, a much larger area of potential litter, given that rockets fly far and sometimes don't come down in one piece). I live in Reno nowadays, and the locals either love or absolutely despise Burning Man, in the latter case for good reason: while Burning Man as an organization clearly cares a lot about “leave no trace” (as I've gotten to see firsthand), the Burners themselves have a tendency to leave pretty giant traces throughout Reno. A big one is bikes getting left behind (by people who don't want to deal with a bike caked in excruciating-to-fully-clean playa dust), and there's a whole supply chain of companies here that'll find those dumped bikes (or encourage Burners to bring them directly), clean 'em up, fix 'em up, and resell them (often back to Burners the following year; rinse and repeat). A lot of other, less-lucrative-to-refurbish-and-resell stuff unfortunately ends up clogging up every dumpster in town.

vonneumannstan 6mo ago

Burning Man is just polyamarous glamping for the Coachella set...

bogometer 6mo ago

Thank you for not "mooping" around.

pratzc07 6mo ago

My respect for Burning Man just went up a lot.

stonegray 6mo ago

I’ve done this for a couple years now, cool to see it pop up here. I believe the scale is a touch larger; 3935 acres in 2025, plus a small amount outside the fence line. On the technical side, we not only log but photograph everything, down to each clump of toilet paper. We check our progress by doing hundreds of tests identical to what the BLM does, both ahead and behind our main crew; bagging up any debris to be photographed on green screens where the pixels are counted to ensure we’re under the 2.29×10^-3 percent limit. It’s a stupendous amount of walking, with no shade, a moop stick and a bucket. But it’s a hell of a feeling to be part of making sure we remain undefeated against an impossible task that the future of burning man depends on.

swah 6mo ago
Any kind of tech for this? Spreadsheets...?
- stonegray 6mo ago
  We use tablets running custom software for everything
  - brcmthrowaway 6mo ago
    What tablets?
    - FernetBronco 6mo ago
      im not sure if that’s on my NDA but I’m comfortable saying it’s an ecosystem constrained decision, with much consideration owed to what kind of cases are available to keep the conductive and corrosive dust off the screen and ports
GaunterODimm 6mo ago
Have you tried any computer vision for automatic categorisation? Happy to take a look into the data if helps.

yulia_dev_la 6mo ago

[flagged]

AcerbicZero 6mo ago

Is there anything more "Burning Man" than taking something we've been doing for decades (A FOD walk), giving it a worse name, and bragging about it on some random blog? I mean, hats off, the author really did nail it. This is as honest as I've ever seen BM get, and the juxtaposition of the unintentionally contrasted with the title makes it even better.

louthy 6mo ago

The leave-no-trace aspect of Burning Man is one of my favourite parts of the event. I've been 10 times in my life, I haven't been for a few years, the trek from the UK is a bit much sometimes! But each time I go to a UK festival I'm always reminded of how bad it would be if leave-no-trace was not a thing. It sickens me seeing the rubbish just strewn everywhere and, at the end of a festival, tents and general piles of waste left "for someone else to deal with". Burning Man is a real breath of fresh air from that viewpoint and seeing everyone (pretty much) adhere to it is pretty special. Individually you take responsibility, not just for your own mess, but if you see MOOP, you clean it up regardless of who made it. It's not somebody else's problem, it's ours. Seeing the camp MOOP report is always pleasing (obviously if you take the cleanup seriously, as most do).

ChrisMarshallNY 6mo ago

I've never heard of this blog, but it's great. Glad to hear of it. I wonder if one of the reasons for the improvement is the "corprotization" of the event. From what I hear, people are increasingly showing up with prefab shelters, or the VIP tents probably have entire cleanup crews. Not like the old "a couple of stoners with a lean-to" kind of thing that probably featured heavily, in the old days.

lordalch 6mo ago
Burning Man itself does not sell VIP tickets. Since 2022, the organization has significantly pushed back against camps trying to package and sell "VIP packages" by restricting them from getting early setup passes, water deliveries, trailer & intermodal container delivery, etc. Without those support services, the model has become pretty unattractive. Also, Burning Man is very intentional about its culture, with de-commodification as one of its main principles. The spotlight that got put on this issue a few years ago has really pushed these camps out, as of 2025. As far as housing, most people sleep in tents, including specialized dome tents with reflective coating for the heat, but those are still essentially tents. Others sleep in RVs/trailers/vehicles. There isn't anyone building a condo tower in the desert.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6mo ago
  Thanks. Good to know. Not something I was ever involved in, but knew a few people that went. They seemed to do it “the right way.” I just know a number of tech bros, and it’s difficult to reconcile what I know of them, and “roughing it.” The stories I heard about VIP tents, aligned a lot more with my observations.

deleted 6mo ago

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kazinator 6mo ago

I bet you there would be far less MOOP if a spot at Burning Man didn't cost so much money. When people pay hundreds of dollars, entitlement tends to creep in. They tend to regard themselves less as a participant and more as a customer. "I'm not sweeping my spot look for a tiny screw; I paid hundreds of dollars to be here; I'm packing up in the most convenient way to me and getting the heck out." Of course, that depends on personality, outlook and circumstances. Given enough people, you get lots of variety in these parameters.

readthenotes1 6mo ago
The whole event is one of excessive entitlement...
stackghost 6mo ago
Years ago it was truly countercultural but now it's just a place for multimillionaires to come, sit in the air conditioning, oogle the Instagram/tiktok influencer girls, and talk about how money just, like, doesn't matter, man.
NickNaraghi 6mo ago
Doesn’t sound like you’ve been there
- DonHopkins 6mo ago
  Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Elizabeth Holmes, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt have been there. Ask them how much trash they left behind or cleaned up. I bet Jeff Bezos didn't carry out all his urine in plastic bottles with his private jet.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- FernetBronco 6mo ago
  I’ve been to regional events, and it’s absolutely true that $90 tickets awarded to last years volunteers moop less than $550 face

joshfraser 6mo ago

Reinforcement training. Camps that leave too much moop don't get invited back.

m463 6mo ago

People do high-speed driving on the smooth lakebed. Encountering a lag bolt might be quite dangerous.

ghostly_s 6mo ago

infamous: adjective 1. Having an exceedingly bad reputation; notorious. "an infamous outlaw." 2. Causing or deserving severe public condemnation; heinous.

CobrastanJorji 6mo ago
Yeah, they knew what it meant.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

nikanj 6mo ago

The real moop map is the absolute mountain of unsorted garbage that gets dumped at the first rest stop / dumpster / trash can. Yeah cool you did not leave your plastic trinkets in the desert, but you did leave all of it next to the trash can on your first gas break

fsckboy 6mo ago

That MOOP map is overlaid on top of the actual Burning Man POOP map: all those attendees who stream to the desert from their urbanized homes? they are People Out Of Place, and eradicating them and all the carbon footprints they leave would completely eliminate the MOOP problem while also generating positive externalities.

arian_ 6mo ago

An event built on radical self-reliance now needs a public shame map to keep people honest. Every community that scales past the point where trust works eventually reinvents compliance.

andrewflnr 6mo ago
Sort of. The "compliance" here is just transmitting pressure applied by the regular, boring, government. But certainly the cleanup would not happen without serious pressure from somewhere.
Daishiman 6mo ago
The process of setting up a camp for the first few times and attempting new art installations is positively gargantuan. There are a lot of considerations happening and MOOP is just one of them. Unless you expect people to get camps and installations right the first time, you need this.

Animats 6mo ago

There's a machine for this, and you can rent it - the Barber Litter Picker.[1] It's a large tractor-pulled machine, like an agricultural implement. It's a variation on their Surf Rake, which is used for beach cleanup. The Litter Picker is built for dirt, hard ground, grass, and pavement. It's used for large outdoor festivals. Scoops up everything from cigarette butts to lawn chairs. Video of cleanup after a big festival.[2] Big festivals are cleaned up in a few hours with this heavy equipment. [1] https://www.hbarber.com/litter-collection-equipment/litter-picker/applications/festival-cleanup-machine/ https://www.hbarber.com/litter-collection-equipment/litter-p... [2] https://videos.files.wordpress.com/IxQgz6Oo/lp-concert-jiffy-lube-virginia-vid.mp4 https://videos.files.wordpress.com/IxQgz6Oo/lp-concert-jiffy...

beAbU 6mo ago
Did you read the full article? The whole point of the manual cleanup duty is the meticulous mapping of MOOP. This information is used by the community to learn and improve for next time. This has resulted in measurable improvement over the years, despite the event growing massively in size during that time. I feel a big commercial machine that cleans the site up in a couple of hours will result in a community that does not espouse the 'leave no trace' principle. Because why would you care? A big machine is going to clean it all up anyway.
- Animats 6mo ago
  Right, needs a drone pass for mapping before and after cleaning. Needing 150 people for weeks to clean up is too labor-intensive. Are they paid?
  - sevg 6mo ago
    You’ve missed the point. This is a cultural commitment not a logistics problem to engineer away. The person you replied to did kindly try to explain to you, but you seem to have ignored it. If you don’t understand the culture of Burning Man, that’s fine. But maybe don’t callously reduce 150 peoples’ labor of love to “btw just use this machine”.

jh00ker 6mo ago

Kind of crazy this is so successful, considering it's hosted in a country where it's the norm for (so many, but not all) people to leave their bags of popcorn and cups of soda at their seats when they leave the movie theatre or ball game, under the assumption, "someone else will take care of it."

giarc 6mo ago
But that's all based on societal norms. It's kind of understood (whether it's right or not) to leave popcorn etc under your seat at a theatre or a stadium. At Burning Man, it's obviously not acceptable.

reubenlavin 6mo ago

Hearing all the issues with lug bolts in the ground I'm curious whether metal detectors were used during cleanup.

infrapilot 6mo ago

[flagged]

askbjoernhansen 6mo ago

Nice to see el pulpo magnifico's camp be spotless on the mini-map in the blog post.

pocksuppet 6mo ago

I'm not going to be Gell-Mann Amnesiated. At least not without calling it out. > Marblelous music. Wintergatan is a quirky instrument that relies heavily on marbles to make music. It's beautiful to watch, and doesn't sound anything like you expect. No. Wintergatan is the artist name of the guy who made and played the instrument. > The infinite buffalo sentence. It's a grammatically correct sentence, using just the word buffalo. The video explanation benefits from some useful visuals, but you'll still probably hate this. Or absolutely love it. There's definitely no middle ground here. The visual below this point is completely useless and does not explain how to make an infinite sentence.

Scroll_Swe 6mo ago

Is burning man still the hot cool rich tech thing or have you people moved on? I think the next upswing will be forests, lakes and such.

glemmaPaul 6mo ago

Isnt Burning Man known to destroy the Microbial Life inside the mud bedding of the festival location?

qmslkdjf 6mo ago

This looks nice, but Burning Man’s “Leave No Trace” reputation doesn’t seem to hold up when you look at what is actually left behind. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoOd0It_1Tc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoOd0It_1Tc) reports trash dumping in Reno and along the highway, burn scars and soil damage left on the playa, a cleanup that leaves debris visibly behind and an inspection process that borders on corrupt. Additionally, the people behind the camera are being intimidated and harassed on public grounds, even though the permit to close the had expired. Even the local police seems to ignore this fact and just do whatever they are told by the Burning Man crew.

stonegray 6mo ago
The playa flooded that year so we started late and were still working when the closure expired. A video of us working claiming that’s how we left it is disingenuous; otherwise what are we still doing there? In a way it’s proof that we did in fact leave it clean; anybody doing a hit piece like that would 100% have included video of post-resto trash if they were able to find any.

fssys 6mo ago

it is quite on the nose that they have this quirky sf-tech-bro coded word for "waste" or "litter". Hey I've got this crazy idea, what if instead of cars we all rode in one big car and it had metal wheels and roads to reduce friction... it's only at Burning Man you can find people with big ideas like this

NoSalt 6mo ago

I would love to see a listing of some of the more interesting Burning Man clean-up finds.