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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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
> 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/leavi...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are lots of people out there who would happily pay fines or not get deposits back if they didn't have to do the less glamorous parts of the event. You have to take something away that they actually care about.
If a camp does a really bad job at moop cleanup, Burning Man organization talks to leads to understand what happened. Frequently what they will take away is the camp's placement in the event, or sometimes even the ability to attend the event as that camp at all.
For reference: I am one of the leads for a fairly large and famous Burning Man camp. We camp on Esplanade most years. We do exactly what you proposed: We have deposits, and the more people put into the camp before, during, and after the event, determines if we offer them a refund and an invitation to camp with us next year. One of the factors is if you help us during setup and strike.
An invitation to camp with us guarantees them a ticket at one of the cheaper tiers. We have plenty of campers that come in, pay the dues, do nothing for the camp, are generally useless during the event, and bail out leaving a huge mess.
Conversely, we have a very small (10-20%) team of highly dedicated individuals who stay past the event and pick every piece of string, fuzz, fluff, lag bolt, rebar, and debris out of the dust and take it out. These people get nearly their entire camp dues back. If they attend next year, the social capital that they've built doing so compounds into them becoming increasingly popular and famous on Playa.
If there's one thing that Burning Man has taught me, it is that very few people are motivated by financial incentive. If you really want to motivate someone, figure out what they genuinely desire. It's rarely money.
If people pay for something, they feel entitled to take advantage of it. I've literally seen people fail to clean up after themselves and explain it as "that's what janitors are paid for".
Requiring a clean-up deposit up front will encourage people who were already inclined to clean up to do so, and encourage people disinclined to do so to leave trash behind.
The communal honor / shame culture that is in place is much more effective- people tend to care more about their reputation than they do money they've already spent.
There's actually research that making people pay for noncompliance (either upfront or post-factum) leads to less compliance, because people that can afford it treat it as a service. And giving that these events are visited by literally billionaires and a lot of affluent SV tech folks, making it a pay service would bury the volunteers under the mountain of trash. If the rules are "you MUST clean up", you get some trash slipping by. But if the rules are changed to "you clean up, or you pay a small fee and don't worry about it" - the amount of things to clean up would raise exponentially, unless you make the deposit so high the vast majority of people can't afford it - which would kill the event completely.
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.
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.
there’s an interesting side to this that better cell coverage, starlink, and others have made burning man more phone friendly. purists will say don’t bring a phone. or the event only works because no one has phones that work
but the event isn’t possible to run without internet. DPW has wifi at every station. internet has become a core planning and organization tool
Burning Man forces you to really think hard about social contracts.
For example - you won't get kicked out for leaving trash all of the ground but you will absolutely be shunned and shamed by everyone around you for doing so. That notion simply doesn't scale to a place like the US with 350M people with varying cultures, values, etc. because the social contracts are simply all over the place and inconsistent.
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.
Theme camp based on an area famous for getting hit with hurricanes and other natural disasters here.
During the rains we were one of the few places still open and where you could party, eat, and grab a solid drink. Being on Esplanade also meant we were a shelter for people to wait out the weather.
Two of my GP&E shifts got rained out. I had walk from Black Hole to 2&E one night with garbage bags over my shoes. The next time when they had to close the gate and all traffic over night, we had to come back in SxS with mud flying everywhere and in places it should not be. It was an experience, all good, still an experience to remember. The caked roads next morning were a sight :D
Since experiencing a deluge the day after the event ended in 1998, I know that the end of Burning Man will be a massive rainstorm at the wrong time.
Fortunately in 1998 it happened after almost everyone had left. It was Tuesday after the burn, and we were packing up. Clouds coming in from Gerlach were worrying, we could see the downpour happening over there and heading our way rapidly.
We closed the trailer door as the rain started. It came down so fast that by the time we were half way to the road it became almost impossible to drive in the mud, we were jackknifing with the trailer, almost losing control. There was an RV also racing to the exit that I witnessed doing accidental 360 spins in the mud, they totally lost control of the vehicle. I'm not sure they made it out.
I heard that the heavy rain continued for a few day, and the cars that were still there sunk into the mud. If you didn't get out before the rain, you were stuck there for weeks.
Now imagine this happens on Saturday, burn night. People have gone through almost all their food and water by then. Then the rain makes it impossible to leave, for weeks. All the vehicles sink into the mud. You can't even really walk through that mud to make it to the road, because it sticks to everything. "Playa platforms" are what you get when you try to walk through the mud. Now add 70,000 people, running out of food and water, and unable to exit the playa for possibly weeks? That's National Guard rescue territory. I doubt Burning Man would be allowed to continue after that.
Ever since 1998 I watch the weather closely, and you can bet I'll be the first one out of there if it's looking serious.
Last year was my first burn, and boy was it an experience. The most insane and hilarious part of the rain is how the lakebed silt mud attaches to your shoes. It gradually accumulates in layers as you walk so you get taller and taller as you walk and heavier and heavier and eventually end up walking around on these 6 inch tall dried mud platforms barely able to lift your legs normally anymore.
The tactics to avoid it are also hilarious, there is one where you put a sock on, then a plastic bag, then another sock on top. Apparently this makes you immune to the mud stacking
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 95.7 ms ] thread(Also, despite having lived in Portland, Reno seems to be the worse city in my experience with people complaining about everything on Reddit.)
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.
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/glas...
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.
These big events usually leave a giant mess behind. Glad to see they take the cleanup and restoration so seriously.
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
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/leavi...
Biggest problem is it’s a pain in the ass to chop up all that chain, and nobody sells them in pre-cut lengths.
I can't find it right now, but I think it was used in deserts in the US or Australia
There are lots of people out there who would happily pay fines or not get deposits back if they didn't have to do the less glamorous parts of the event. You have to take something away that they actually care about.
If a camp does a really bad job at moop cleanup, Burning Man organization talks to leads to understand what happened. Frequently what they will take away is the camp's placement in the event, or sometimes even the ability to attend the event as that camp at all.
For reference: I am one of the leads for a fairly large and famous Burning Man camp. We camp on Esplanade most years. We do exactly what you proposed: We have deposits, and the more people put into the camp before, during, and after the event, determines if we offer them a refund and an invitation to camp with us next year. One of the factors is if you help us during setup and strike.
An invitation to camp with us guarantees them a ticket at one of the cheaper tiers. We have plenty of campers that come in, pay the dues, do nothing for the camp, are generally useless during the event, and bail out leaving a huge mess.
Conversely, we have a very small (10-20%) team of highly dedicated individuals who stay past the event and pick every piece of string, fuzz, fluff, lag bolt, rebar, and debris out of the dust and take it out. These people get nearly their entire camp dues back. If they attend next year, the social capital that they've built doing so compounds into them becoming increasingly popular and famous on Playa.
If there's one thing that Burning Man has taught me, it is that very few people are motivated by financial incentive. If you really want to motivate someone, figure out what they genuinely desire. It's rarely money.
Requiring a clean-up deposit up front will encourage people who were already inclined to clean up to do so, and encourage people disinclined to do so to leave trash behind.
The communal honor / shame culture that is in place is much more effective- people tend to care more about their reputation than they do money they've already spent.
but the event isn’t possible to run without internet. DPW has wifi at every station. internet has become a core planning and organization tool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0_u1ZvHOu4
The Day Before The Revolution, U.K. LeGuin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Before_the_Revolution
The Dispossessed, U.K. LeGuin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed
Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
For example - you won't get kicked out for leaving trash all of the ground but you will absolutely be shunned and shamed by everyone around you for doing so. That notion simply doesn't scale to a place like the US with 350M people with varying cultures, values, etc. because the social contracts are simply all over the place and inconsistent.
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.
During the rains we were one of the few places still open and where you could party, eat, and grab a solid drink. Being on Esplanade also meant we were a shelter for people to wait out the weather.
Loads of great moments by doing that.
Fortunately in 1998 it happened after almost everyone had left. It was Tuesday after the burn, and we were packing up. Clouds coming in from Gerlach were worrying, we could see the downpour happening over there and heading our way rapidly.
We closed the trailer door as the rain started. It came down so fast that by the time we were half way to the road it became almost impossible to drive in the mud, we were jackknifing with the trailer, almost losing control. There was an RV also racing to the exit that I witnessed doing accidental 360 spins in the mud, they totally lost control of the vehicle. I'm not sure they made it out.
I heard that the heavy rain continued for a few day, and the cars that were still there sunk into the mud. If you didn't get out before the rain, you were stuck there for weeks.
Now imagine this happens on Saturday, burn night. People have gone through almost all their food and water by then. Then the rain makes it impossible to leave, for weeks. All the vehicles sink into the mud. You can't even really walk through that mud to make it to the road, because it sticks to everything. "Playa platforms" are what you get when you try to walk through the mud. Now add 70,000 people, running out of food and water, and unable to exit the playa for possibly weeks? That's National Guard rescue territory. I doubt Burning Man would be allowed to continue after that.
Ever since 1998 I watch the weather closely, and you can bet I'll be the first one out of there if it's looking serious.
The tactics to avoid it are also hilarious, there is one where you put a sock on, then a plastic bag, then another sock on top. Apparently this makes you immune to the mud stacking
That's okay, your attendees just dump it on the roadside or overflow public trash bins at random businesses and parks along their way.
are there similar events in europe? you sound like an experienced oldhead :)
grams of garbage per humanhour unit
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.
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
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.