BARBARELLA: 

I believe we can get it all. I really believe we can. If we get a good team that really cares, and if we can get the Burning Man greater community to be more aware about, like, “What am I bringing out that might end up as MOOP?” and maybe restrict that preventative thinking when you’re packing. I believe we can get it all. 

We can even work towards eventually putting me out of a job because we’re doing such a great job; we’re not leaving anything on the highway. I believe that’s possible, and I believe it’s a really beautiful goal to work towards. 

And really, there is no fail in taking care of the land. This is our home. This is what connects us all. And it’s our responsibility and our great honor and joy to take care of it in this way!

STUART: 

Hey everybody, Burning Man LIVE. I’m Stuart Mangrum, and today we’re gonna go deep, deep, deep on Leaving No Trace because I know you love it. I know you’ve adopted it as one-tenth of Burning Man’s ethos, one of the 10 Principles. It is pretty thoroughly baked into our DNA. You know, of course, that our Black Rock City event in the Nevada desert is the world’s largest Leave No Trace event. Yay! 

But, It’s so much bigger than that. We are playing this out worldwide. There are nearly a hundred other Burning Man events around the globe that are also adhering to this way of being. It’s an attitude, it’s a mindset, and at its best it’s like being a super spy, or a ninja. I mean, you get in, you get out, and you disappear like no one was ever there. 

And it’s actually more than that. In our ongoing quest to leave less and less of a trace, to get to that elusive zero point of LNT, the wording of the principle actually calls us further. It invites us to leave spaces in better shape than we found them. 

So, are we doing a lot of leaving no tracinging? Yes, we are. The fact that a city of 75,000 humans can pick up so well after itself is really just this side of miraculous. 

Can we do more? Always. And those of us who take the challenge seriously, who look at this as not just a checklist item, but as a lifetime practice, as a process, as a stretch goal, are always looking at ways to get closer to that zero point.

And the next level up from that is to work on tools and techniques to do it collectively, and not just as individuals. Because, come on, let’s face it, people are fallible. Everyone operates at different points on the LNT learning curve. This is not a skill set that most people learn in the default world. It is a set of behaviors that have to be cultivated. 

In this episode, we’re going to look at some of the things that actually do get left behind, for better or worse, so as to better understand our cumulative impact, and make better choices about how we leave no trace. Because it’s not one choice. It’s a cascade of choices. 

We’re going to introduce you to some of the unsung heroes, our last lines of defense against the chaos of trace-leaving, with the hope that by better understanding the system as a whole, you’ll be better positioned to be a good citizen, and to teach good citizenship… Plus, eh, there may be a few poop jokes.

Think of this as an episode of Dirty Jobs because 75,000 humans put out a lot of tons of solid waste in a week or two, and it’s gotta go somewhere. The ancients knew this. That’s why they invented plumbing as a cornerstone of urban life. 

Matt Morgan, aka Hazmatt, has been with the Black Rock City Department of Public Works since 2001. He is the Associate Director of Business Operations, which means complete mastery of all the logistical things, including those blue plastic phone booth looking contraptions that are the basis of Playa civilization. The thin blue line between us humans and the wallowing beasts.

–

STUART: 

Hazmatt, when it comes to porta potties in Black Rock City, you are the man. You manage how many of them there are, you manage the vendor relationship, how often they’re pumped out, all that. First, I just want to say thank you for your service.

HAZMATT: 

Glad to be of service.

STUART: 

And hopefully more than one service a day, if you know what I mean. I’m old enough to remember when I think there was one porta potty in the whole camp, and it actually got stolen at the end of the event. The same year that somebody stole my tent, they stole a porta potty, and I still decide to imagine them homesteading out there somewhere in the wilds of northern Nevada. You got a tent, you got shelter, you’ve got waste disposal. What else do you need? 

HAZMATT: 

Well, hopefully they’re getting it serviced.

STUART: 

Yeah, right. That’s an important part of this thing. It’s a big, complicated machine, I know, with a lot of tendrils. A big price tag. How much does Burning Man spend on toilets for the Black City event in a year?

HAZMATT: 

Good lord, I actually can’t remember the final total this year. The way the contract is structured, we basically have some á la carte pricing so that we can have some fluctuation in the overall numbers, but it is north of $1 million.

STUART: 

I’m not really comfortable with the phrase ‘á la carte’ in the context that you just used, but… Okay, well, what do participants in the event need to know about our waste stream disposal? About the porta potties that you think is not common knowledge? What are some insights that you can give to people to be better porta potty citizens?

HAZMATT: 

Well, one thing that I think a lot of folks don’t know is that the effluent from Black Rock City is actually land applied. A lot of people think that it goes to the treatment center in Lockwood, and it takes a lot of energy to do the processing of the wastewater, but it is actually land applied, it’s land applied on private land.

I don’t know if they’re still using this particular crop, but for many, many years it was actually used on garlic that was then going to be turned into olfactant, which is put in natural gas tanks. So the smell that you get from natural gas is actually an artificial thing that is added. So, Burning Man poop was going into garlic, which was going into gas to keep it from killing people because it didn’t have a smell.

STUART: 

Circle of life. That’s really, really fascinating to know that our waste, our poop and pee is going to a good purpose. It’s being used and not just flushed away. 

HAZMATT: 

Absolutely. 

STUART: 

I’ve occasionally gone into a porta potty and been just knocked out to find that someone had decorated it.

HAZMATT: 

Yeah.

STUART: 

Do people really adopt porta potties?

HAZMATT: 

Yeah they do. It’s actually been kind of a tradition for many, many years. People have done some really, really elaborate stuff. One of my favorite things, outside of just decoration of the inside, was, there was a group of folks who would you as soon as somebody would go into the porta potty, they’d lay out a red carpet and they had like a little stanchions, you know, with the velvet rope, you know, and so people would come out of the porta potty and people applauding. That sort of jackassery is absolutely hilarious.

But yeah, people will deck them out and decorate them in all sorts of different ways. Something that I always tell folks when they’re interested in doing that is: Don’t forget, it does get serviced. And part of that servicing is that it’ll get hosed out. So make sure that whatever decorations you’ve got in there either are waterproof or are going to be prepared for that happening.

Many years ago, there was actually a group that came out and they put a facade on banks out on the empty playa, and the facade was like the moai, the Easter Island heads, which is, I think, one of my favorite porta potty decorations.

STUART: 

You know, everybody loves to complain, but I find it interesting that the people who seem to complain the least and actually seem very happy are the hard working vendors who come out and clean them. There’s people who’ve been doing that for years and years. Right? Have really become members of the community.

HAZMATT: 

Yeah. Absolutely. It’s actually really surprising that the United Site Services still has folks that are around from when, you know, we were serviced by Johnny on the Spot. Johnny on the Spot I think got bought by United Site Services in 2003-4, something like that. And there’s people that I worked with to this day who were around before they were acquired then. 

That’s pretty impressive.

STUART: 

I can’t believe that they bought Johnny on the Spot and didn’t keep the name. That is probably the best porta potty rental name ever. But they have some good names too, like, I know Golden Shower is one of the guys.

HAZMATT:

Yep. And the boss man is Turd Burglar. And Turd Burglar is one of those titles that gets conveyed to the next generation. So it’s a station, more than just a playa name, because there has been two Turd Burglars so far, and one of these days there will be a third.

STUART: 

Well, I guess if you can’t keep your sense of humor about it, what’s the point, right?

HAZMATT: 

Yeah, that is absolutely the truth.

STUART: 

In this last year with the unexpected rainstorms and all that, did that create any additional challenges, or did we learn any new lessons from that?

HAZMATT: 

Yeah, absolutely. We definitely learned some lessons, mostly fairly unpleasant ones. One of the things that was happening is that people, understandably, were pissing in whatever they could find in terms of like, a jug they’ve got in their tent or whatever. But unfortunately, people are not very good about packing that stuff out, and they think it’s okay to just go take these bottles and just put them in the porta potty as like some sort of little gift. That’s actually really not that cool. If you’re going to save your urine for whatever reason, they can dump it in the porta potty and then take that damn bottle away with you. 

There was also an uptick in people that were shitting in garbage bags and then dropping them along the highway, and/or at the dumpsters in Nixon. And the folks in Nixon were really, really not thrilled with that.

I got to say, at the very least, we didn’t find too many of these bags on playa itself. So at least people got them off site. But still, that’s something that is NOT pleasant for anybody to deal with.

STUART: 

Yeah, I mean, they’re there, people. Use them. I was talking with Scirpus the other day who used to run our Environmental Compliance unit, which is a nice way of saying the poop patrol.

HAZMATT: 

It’s more than that. It’s more than that.

STUART: 

I know, but she said there were over 80 incidents where they had to go out and remove human waste from the playa. What’s wrong with people? Are they just newcomers to the drugs that they’re on and just can’t wait or I don’t know. I’m trying to make up an excuse for these people, but that just seems ridiculously uncivilized.

HAZMATT: 

Yeah, I think that’s probably a big part of it. I prefer to think that that’s the problem rather than just straight laziness. We’ve all been there, you know, when you’re clinchin’ and runnin’ and try to figure out how far you could go. But I do think that people need to learn to time their rolls a little bit better.

One of the reasons why we have the DMZ, which we call the, it’s the Dance Music Zone, and it’s out probably about 10:00, or about 11,11:45 straight out. And there’s three banks of the Ecozoic units that we have out there. And the reason we had to put those out there was because art cars, specifically Robot Heart, were causing these huge draws and they would stay in one place for a very long period of time. People love it. They’re awesome. But if they’re anywhere other than where there are facilities, then what happens is people end up shitting and pissing on the playa. And it got so bad that we not only had to put these units out there, but then we had to actually set up time limits for how long large art cars, specifically with sound, could sit in one place before they have to actually go over there next to those porta potties.

The whole history of this thing has been pretty reactive in the sense that we do what we think makes sense, and then we have to correct that and do what actually needs to be done in terms of where we site the things, how many we put. It’s always some issue that we’re having to deal with, and it’s kind of led to the overall number of units that we’ve got, which is north of 1700. It’s led to differences in how we place the things. And it also has informed how many we have to have together in any given place because if the bank is too small, it’ll get overloaded. If the bank gets too big, it’s a bad use of resources, you know. So it’s been an interesting thing to kind of learn about all this stuff.

STUART: 

1700 porta potties. So if you can’t find one, you’re lame. 

–

STUART: 

Bottles of pee. Why can’t people just dump it in the potty? This completely eludes me. but apparently some people get halfway home with their piss pots and urine urns and oh, then they decide to leave these things on the side of the road, which is just completely incomprehensible to me. 

Talk about people being at different points on the learning curve. Apparently, some people think that once they hit the pavement. The principle of leaving no trace no longer applies to them. They’re not in Black Rock City. Hey, different rules apply, right? Have you seen the photos of the highway after Exodus?

After the bulk of the people leave on Monday? Not a good look for us, people. And especially hard for our year-round relations. With our year-round neighbors. The Playa Restoration team, thankfully, has a highway cleanup unit. And Barbarella is their manager. I think we should learn a little bit more about their work.

Which, hopefully, we can make completely unnecessary one fine day in the future. 

–

STUART: 

So, Barbarella, you are the Highway Cleanup Manager of the Playa Restoration crew and our Department of Public works in Black Rock City. I think a lot of people are not really aware that this team even exists. A lot of people leave before you start working. And unfortunately the internet is now full of people trolling with pictures of garbage on the highway. That’s the image a lot of people have of Black Rock City after the fact. Can you tell us a little bit about the operation, the scale of it, the number of volunteers you’ve got, the miles you cover, all of that?

BARBARELLA: 

Yeah. So, Highway Cleanup is like the arm that extends from Playa Restoration into the rest of the default world. We cover up to about 600 miles of highway. We go all the way to Wadsworth and Fernley and Nixon, Sutcliffe; we go into California, Cedarville. We even go as far as the sulfur mine back on Jungo Road, because people do come in that way off the I-80 on the back route there.

We do three phases. Phase One is recon, and we usually wait until Exodus is down before it’s safe to get crew out there on the highways and do recon, which is why nobody really sees us. It’s too dangerous for me to have my crew out on the highway during the main portion of Exodus. So I’m waiting for the green light from Gate to say, “Okay, we’re at about 20%,” and then I head out. 

Phase Two is when we’re probably rolling in the thickets. That’s like the big muscle time. There’s the most amount of priority debris and abandoned vehicles, things like that. We’ve got three trucks rolling. I’ve got two assistant managers and up to four volunteers per vehicle. So it’ll be about 15 total. And, oh, gosh. Yeah. Phase Two. It’s really intense, really long days, a lot of ground to cover. It feels like you can never get it all. 

And then we stay as late as, first week of October doing Phase Three, just going with one truck and up to about five volunteers. And that’s when we’re just going through with a fine tooth comb, and getting all the smaller stuff. 

The bane of our existence — I’m so glad to have a voice to talk about this — is the, I’m going to call it HVAC. I’m not sure what the actual term for it is, It looks like aluminum foil bubble wrap with blue painter’s tape. Everybody puts this on their RV windows and stuff. It’s a really good idea when you’re on playa to keep the sunlight out, to keep the space cooler on the inside. But if I could just ask a huge favor of the entire Burning Man community: When you’re about to hit the highway, and you’re doing your Exodus, and you’re leaving the city, if you could just pull that bubble wrap and all that blue painter’s tape off your windows.

Blue painter’s tape is mainly just for temporary, you know, painting around a window sill, so it doesn’t have good adhesive and as soon as that playa dust gets on it, it’s completely worthless. It doesn’t stick. And when you hit 50, 60, 80 miles an hour on that highway there, it goes flying! 

The reflectiveness of these HVAC stuff is just, it’ll hide sometimes, and then depending on if it’s morning or afternoon or which way you’re coming on the highway, it’ll be blinding like a mirror.

The huge problem with this stuff is it goes flying and if it goes out of my jurisdiction, over a fence, say, into some private property or a cattle pasture, I cannot allow my crew to legally get it. So there it sits, and it looks bad and actually, like, these are people who own land and have businesses in the area, and they’re the people we actually don’t want to piss off. It’s not like it’s falling in some neutral territory with just BLM land or something. This is actually a problem for them. And, you can see it from the highway and we’re not allowed to legally get it. And so it’s very frustrating, and they’re usually really large pieces too. And they blow really far because they’re lightweight.

So that, toilet paper and plastic bags. If we could just have everyone do everything they can to make sure those plastic bags are tied down. And I don’t know what’s up with the toilet paper. It seems like it’s just everywhere and you can’t really pick it up because we have a very thorny environment and it just wants to stick to everything. When you grab it, it just shreds. All of those bright white shreds are there, and that bright white color of the plastic bags, all the toilet paper, they’re just a really big eyesore. They stand out really bad. 

And it’s really hard, especially for the crew in Phase Three, who I mainly am able to poach off the Resto lines. They’re such good MOOPers. They are, like, into the micro MOOP, and the glitter, and they’re so thorough at doing that tedious stuff and having a patient attitude and mindset for it out there in that desert heat. And they want to get it all. So it gives them huge MOOP anxiety to leave anything. We’re covering hundreds and hundreds of miles. We have a limited amount of time. So the less we have out there to worry about, the quicker our jobs can be. And, I just want to help them out too with that MOOP anxiety. They have such a hard time leaving stuff. I’d really like to get it all. 

I’ve had wonderful people from the tribal lands tell us, you know, “It’s okay. We’ll never get it all,” And people from NDOT and Caltrans and federal agents, and my manager DA, Playa Restoration Manager tell me, “You can never get it all. Don’t be stressed out, don’t have anxiety. You know, just be calm and do a good job.” 

But I believe we can get it all. I really believe we can. If we keep pushing the way we are every year, and we get a good team that really cares. And if we can get the Burning Man greater community to be more aware about, like, tying their stuff down good, and what am I bringing out that might end up as MOOP? – a nd maybe restrict that preventative thinking when you’re packing. I believe we can get it all. 

We can even work towards eventually putting me out of a job because we’re doing such a great job; we’re not leaving anything on the highway. I believe that’s possible, and I believe it’s a really beautiful goal to work towards. And really, there is no fail in taking care of the land, you know, if we’re aware of it and we’re trying. Okay, that’s good enough. And I will keep showing up and I will keep cleaning those highways. 

And, you know, it’s not about getting the recognition. I don’t mind being the clockwork gears behind the clockwork gears. And that’s kind of what DPW is for Burning Man. Not a lot of people even know, like, who these people are that build the city. But to even be behind the scenes of that, fixing the fleet vehicles, the DPW that built the city, or being highway cleanup, where you’re the arm of Playa Restoration that doesn’t even show up until after everyone’s gone. It’s not about the recognition. It’s about taking care of the land. 

We’re definitely doing it to make sure we can get that federal contract to have Burning Man again the next year, which is a lot of pressure. But also for me, it’s the motherland. This is our home. This is what connects us all. And it’s our responsibility and our great honor and joy to take care of it in this way!

STUART: 

Well, I want to recognize you and your crew and appreciate you for the work that you do. Because of the timing, I know you are sort of unsung heroes, but, when most people are long gone and down the road, our neighbors are still looking at us and tapping their feet and saying, “Well?” 

What else can we do as participants to put you out of a job? And by plastic bags, do you mean like bags of trash that have fallen out of the back of people’s trucks on to the roadside? This all just a matter of securing load or what?

BARBARELLA: 

You know, the toilet paper. At some point we were making jokes that someone’s doing it on purpose. It’s like somebody is unrolling an entire roll of… maybe it blows off and then it rolls and rolls and the whole thing just unravels, and you get these long ribbons of like, an entire toilet paper roll unribboned on to the side of the highway. And I don’t know how that happens. 

Maybe they pop out to go pee. You know, it’s a really long stretch of highway, and maybe a lot of people just can’t make it that far. There’s not a lot of portos along the way. So I think maybe pop out to pee and maybe it rolls away or something. I don’t know, but toilet paper is just something that ends up a lot on the side of the highway. 

And then the plastic bags I’m talking about are just little plastic grocery bags that maybe you get at a gas station or  the dollar store or something like that. And I don’t know how those end up on the highway either, except for that they’re just lightweight, right? Maybe it’s the desert highway. It’s hot. You got your windows rolled down and something like that might just catch and blow out really quickly.

One thing that you guys could do to help put “Highway” out of a job is, like I was saying, think preventatively when you’re packing, what you’re bringing out? Just try and go as minimalist as possible and think about what kind of stuff can turn into MOOP.

But also it’s about, pack it in, pack it out. Right? So if you can just plan on bringing everything that you’re bringing in, we’re taking all this trash back home. Pre-sort it at your camp. And I’m sure there are people, lovely people at TSA that would love to have you show up,and just give you a little tour, maybe, of how to sort your trash properly; what’s burnable, what plastics can all be even compacted so they take up less space.

But if you sort all your trash at your camp before you go and you plan on taking it all the way home, you may not have to, you may find a dump location in Reno or Sacramento or wherever, where you can pay to unload it, properly and legally, and that’s awesome. But if you just plan on bringing it all the way home, a lot of people are not going to want to do that. So they’re going to make sure they have the least amount possible, right? So they’re going to be thinking, preventatively, “Oh gosh, if I have to bring this all the way home, maybe I can do without.” 

You know how you make a grocery list for what you need? Maybe make a list at the beginning when you’re packing of What I can do without? What creates MOOP? And just kind of write stuff down and look at that list and think about, just start bringing in awareness to like what I’m bringing out, how much I’m bringing back, you know, how I’m going to sort it out, what impact it’s leaving on the land, what I actually don’t need, what I’ll probably be able to trade when I’m there, stuff like that. I think would really help because I think a lot of times people are just so excited. They’re like, “Oh, and I’m going to need this and I’m gonna need this.” And, you know, we’re in this materialist consumer American ideal, and it’s like, well, we actually don’t need all that. Maybe we can do all that shedding before we come out. You know, everything that we need is going to be there. We don’t need to overdo it. You know what I mean?

STUART: 

Well, we’re not as a culture, light packers, because you can’t buy anything out there, right? You know? And overcompensating and bringing more stuff, more being overly self-reliant, does facilitate Gifting, but what about the people who don’t drive all the way home or just going to the airport or whatever? I know a lot of them are tempted to use some of these highway roadside dumpsters, five bucks. Are any of those legit? Or should they just take them to a real dump in Reno or an adjoining city?

BARBARELLA: 

That’s a good question. I’m really glad you asked that, because that’s the first thing I have to deal with when I hit the highway, is tracking where all of those trash collection vendors are, and communicating with them. And so, some are legal. And I’d say, if you were a participant leaving and you’ve seen some on tribal lands with seven or eight or ten dumpsters and kind of, you know, and kind of, an RV, and it looks like a pretty permanent situation, those dumpsters are being hauled on and off by semis, and they’re dealing with their cities and their counties. It may cost a little more. It might be a $10 a bag one, you know, but I’d recommend going to those. If you just see a truck, with no place on the side of the highway saying, “Oh yeah, $5,” please, please, dear God, do not give that person your trash. Because it happens from time to time and I’m not going to get too far into it, but we do have people like that take those truckloads and then dump them somewhere, either on tribal land or federal BLM land, and I have to go and remediate it later. And it’s just really sad. It’s just really sad that there are some crooks out there just trying to make some fast cash and then just dumping it on the land. 

Just kind of look around before you leave your trash or sell your trash to a vendor and look for the ones that are more, you know, a lot of dumpsters, seven, eight, ten dumpsters. There’s at least two or three that are like that on the tribal land. And know that, you know, even if you are paying double that money is going to families on the tribal lands, and, you know, they could use the extra money and I would prefer it go to them. And they are doing it the legal way. So yeah, please, please just don’t give it to a random truck who’s going to then go and just dump it somewhere, because that’s heartbreaking.

STUART: 

So what’s the weirdest thing you guys have ever found out there?

BARBARELLA: 

The weirdest thing. Oh, gosh. I can tell you, the grossest thing we ever found was, it wasn’t 100, but it was a lot of pee bottles. Somebody, you know, took all their pee bottles from camp, and they just didn’t want to take them home. And so they just put them, you know, wherever they stopped to go pee on a turnout or something.

We’re just like, dear God, do we really have to do this to sit here, and open and dump all of these smelly piss things out and go take all the bottles and recycle them? Yeah, that’s just horrific.

STUART: 

So what about the other side of the coin? Do you ever find anything good? I mean, any ground score out there?

BARBARELLA: 

You know, there’s been a few times where we have found a suitcase kind of in a gulch, and people are, like, scrambling and climbing and pushing and shoving each other, trying to get to that suitcase and open it, hoping it’s like a suitcase full of money or something. Usually it’s just trash, or empty or something. But those are, those are always fun finding a suitcase, you know, because who knows what’s in it.

STUART: 

Anything else you want to tell us about how to be good citizens on the highway? Going home?

BARBARELLA: 

Yeah. Look out for people. When people leave Burning Man, some people are not ready to leave Burning Man. I see people sometimes, they’re out, they need to get out, they go, and then they end up at the first turnout. You’d think they’re getting out to have a little picnic or something, but it looks like they’re unpacking, and repacking, and who knows what. They got a lot going on there. They’re sorting through stuff and repacking, looking for something. I don’t know, but it seems like they’re just, when they’re leaving, they need to get out of there, but they’re not quite ready to leave, and they’re still kind of packing and they’re still…so maybe, just help each other out.

You see somebody that looks like, oh, gosh, they ran out of gas or you know, oh, these people need help strapping down their load better, or you see a long line starting to develop at a turnout where there’s just a truck taking $5 for a bag of trash, you could talk to your fellow Burners and see if you can help them, see if you can tell them to maybe go a bit further down to the larger trash collection sites. If you stop and you see someone give a gallon of water if you can. I mean, you know, it’s the desert. Water and gas are the two most important things. 

But, yeah, just make sure to help each other out. It’s like everyone’s going through something or other when they’re leaving Burning Man. It’s a process. Just that feeling of knowing that, you know, we’re out of Burning Man, but our community at large is still here, out here in the world, and we are here for each other still. It’s really a big deal to me. So yeah, if you see yourself on the side of the road, just pull over and see how they’re doing.

–

STUART: 

One really terrific way to leave less of a trace is to take fewer traces with you when you leave home. Shed all that excess packaging and be thoughtful about what kind of containers you bring along. Are your empty drink receptacles going to contribute to the education of the local school children or contribute to the plastic reef on Plastic Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Paul Schreer is Burning Man Project’s Wastestream Sustainability Manager, aka mr. blue. He also designs the lighting for the Man in Black Rock City, and as a hobby, I guess, is the leader of Recycle Camp, in Black Rock City, a long running institution that donates every penny back to the Gerlach School in Gerlach, Nevada. Go Lions! I had a chat with blue about packaging choices, the history of Recycle Camp, and their truly awesome can crushing machine. 

–

STUART: 

So tell us more about Recycle Camp. That was where you first landed when you got to Burning Man, and you’ve been involved in helping to manage that ever since, right? 

BLUE:

Yeah. So, originally started by a couple of people, Agent Orange and Captain Crush, it was around 1997-ish time when they saw a large pile of trash, in that trash was a lot of recycling. They asked somebody, “Why is there no recycling here in Black Rock City?” And that person said, “You wanna see recycling, why don’t you start a camp?” 

STUART: 

Do-ocracy!

BLUE:

D-oocracy, right?!

STUART: 

I wanted to kind of zoom out a little bit, and talk about leaving no trace as a practice. If you could get that participant and get like a few minutes of their time and tell them what to do to be better at leaving no trace, what kind of advice would you give to that mysterious participant?

BLUE:

Well, yeah, that’s a really good question, Stuart. I like the idea of zooming back out a little bit. If you get too into the weeds, people get lost and they don’t, they stop hearing you, they stop really thinking about the bigger picture.

It also ties into another little story that I just mentioned to Vav about a camp that’s coming out this year. They are a camp that apparently I think does Gin & Tonics because they were talking about having a lot of tonic water and having to buy a lot of tonic water and plastic bottles, and sent an email to Recycle Camp asking us if we knew of another camp that would take plastic bottles.

I thought about it, and I came up with the best answer of all, which is really the answer that comes straight out of the Recycle Camp, and the origins of Recycle Camp, which is basically anti-plastic and pro aluminum. And so we wanted to get everyone to bring everything in aluminum cans.

So I sent the guy an email back, and I said I think the answer that you need here is that you should buy all of your tonic water in aluminum cans, and then bring the empty ones to Recycle Camp and crush them, and we’ll take them from you. 

It also ties into one of our other mantras which is leaving all unnecessary packaging at home. So plastic bottles, in my opinion, are unnecessary packaging. You should leave them at home and figure out a different alternative when you’re coming to Burning Man. And maybe, for every part of your life, actually, you should find an alternative for that plastic bottle that you think is the only way to get tonic water.

The real bonus is that they don’t have to bring any of the cans back. They can bring ’em over to Recycle Camp. But even more so than that, every single time they pour a gin and tonic, it’s gonna be some fresh tonic water. You will never be putting a cap back on a plastic bottle of tonic water and having it sit there. It might cost a few cents more per ounce, maybe, but that’s really a win-win for everybody. Better Gin & Tonics, and you don’t have to bring any of that waste back that you brought out with you. 

So I hope they heed my advice and, I hope that’s the right word: heed. Usually you hear it as “heed my warning,” But anyway, my advice. 

STUART: 

No, I think “heed” is good. I think they should be heedonists, and heed warnings. You’re preaching to the choir here, man. I mean, I’ve been running bars out there since for freaking ever. And plastic is evil.

You know what else? Glass is evil. And it used to be, people would always bring their beer in glass bottles, and thank goodness nowadays most modern breweries have canning lines. So they can bring your beer out in aluminum. But man, getting rid of all that stuff ahead of time. The other thing that we did, and this was actually, I credit this breakthrough to my friend, the Newt King, who’s one of the longest serving bartenders on playa.

He got tired of mixing individual margaritas and that mountain of lime shells. And of course that lime juice on your cracked and blistered fingers doesn’t feel very good. So he started mixing cocktails in five gallon cornelius kegs, the cylindrical stainless steel kegs that are used for shipping soda concentrate, right? And every home brewer has a few. So we took that to an extreme and for many years had bars where everything we had was out of a gun. It really, really made life easier.

And even more fun once you emptied one of those kegs, inevitably in every bar’s life cycle first you run out of the mixers, then you run out of booze, and then people start showing up with booze, and then people start showing up with mixers as they leave, right?

So we would mix in the kegs, whatever showed up. And we came up with all kinds of names for that, ya know: Sucker Punch or Jungle Juice or whatever, and free drinks, people don’t care. That’s precycling is what you call that, right? 

BLUE:

Recycling is, in a way, is probably the best way to think about it, and I think people should do that all the time when they’re going camping anywhere. There’s no reason to take things with you that you’d end up having to bring back, unnecessarily.

It comes down to just looking at everything that you’re doing and seeing, are you wasting anything? Because leaving no trace, in my head, goes way beyond the physical things that one might ya know drop on the ground, or trash that goes to the landfill or anything like that. It can be very non-physical in the sense of how you present yourself and conduct yourself in a community, you know? So, and it really starts with just rethinking how you’re living your life. 

–

STUART: 

Now, I know I said earlier that these are, unsung heroes, but let’s face it, if anybody in the LNT game is getting sung about, having songs sung about them, perhaps even with a bard following them around, strumming on a lute like that guy who follows Sir Robin, it’s definitely gonna be the DA of the Black Rock, the Dark Angel, Dominic Tinio. He leads the Playa Restoration team, and he is on a mission, my friends, to get our collective traces down to nada, zip, nil, zero. He is the man behind the MOOP Map that tracks Matter Out Of Place to help determine if your camp is naughty or nice. And he always has a few solid suggestions to help get you and your crew off the lump-of-coal side of the ledger and onto the candy cane side.

I talked to DA about lessons learned from last year’s nail biter of a government inspection, the latest trends in intractable MOOP, and a new procedure he’s recommending for all the camps. 

–

STUART: 

DA, you are the manager of our Playa Restoration team, so you are the one who ends up holding up the fort at the end of the event, a lot of times. I know that you’ve said many times your job isn’t possible without the hard work of all of the participants. What do you want people to know more about as they go into this year’s event season?

DA: 

The big thing is that people do their MOOP sweeps. MOOP sweeps is essential. That is when camps and art projects line up arms-width apart, and walk from one side to the other.

STUART: 

A lot of times people are like, “Hey, that wasn’t me. That must have been the neighbor’s stuff blew in.” Or, “I’m not responsible for the street out in front of my frontage am I right? I’m getting hosed for this.”

DA: 

Yeah, You know, MOOP blowing in, usually when MOOP’s blowing around, it blows all the way to the trash fence. It doesn’t just stop at your camp and make your camp entirely red. There is MOOP even in a clean camp, but it just doesn’t necessarily stop our progress. Okay. And then so, what we’re recording on the streets is also just data. This is just the way we found it. 

We’re asking camps to MOOP out into their streets and meet your neighbors halfway into the streets. But the MOOP sweeps are important, especially after something like last year. When you arrive in camp, your area, you got the beautiful stretch of Black Rock Desert, you’re serving your area. Do a MOOP sweep. First thing you do is do you MOOP sweep, and you’ll find any MOOP that we missed as well. And what the nature of MOOP during, after a season, is that anything that might have been hidden underneath the surface, once the rains come from the winter time, the rains push the playa dust down, and MOOP that is just below the surface will start to slowly rise up to the surface.

So it’ll be much more visible at this time of the year than it was during Resto. And so that’s really important for people to do MOOP sweeps. And then also, you know, just get that MOOP off the ground and then, you know the territory you’re responsible for. 

And then, for camps and art projects to MOOP sweep it all through the event, it makes it so much easier on the crew that strikes at the end. So that way, that rockstar crew at the end that is tearing down and cleaning up, that MOOP will already have been off the playa.

STUART: 

Right? Never hit it.

DA: 

It never hit it. You know, or it hit it, but it got picked up right away while it was visible. And that’s why it’s so crucial for people to do MOOP sweeps during the event. 

STUART: 

Let’s talk about the inspection this past year, because I know we just barely, barely squeaked by, and I know the weather was definitely a factor in that. But what did we learn from that? What lessons do you think our participants should take away from that experience of just kind of passing by the skin of our teeth after a difficult weather year?

DA: 

It was a hard fought battle. We won that game that we brought it to the skin of our teeth. But also the community. It’s like, I still want to start with the community does an excellent job, which is why I always knew we were in the game. And so, you can really tell by looking at the MOOP map. You can see areas where – big areas – were super clean, and you can see areas that struggled, and they could be right next to each other, you know, and they can happen for a million different reasons. And none of those reasons means that people are bad people. Alright. Generally speaking, Black Rock citizens, we’re good people. And so we want to do things.

We sometimes just get challenged. We’re challenged in leaving no trace. There was a lot of people who were challenged, and felt like they perhaps need to get out of there, for all the reasons. We don’t know exactly what that number is and what that percentage is, but it had an impact. Everything happened. But we learned from it, right? 

So we had an uptick in things that we don’t usually have an uptick in. We had an uptick in things like plastic, which was things that people were strapping around their boots and whatever, so they can walk around, and cardboard. People were laying cardboard down to make some kind of floor tiling, makeshift floor tiling or whatnot. And then people were finding that when the playa dried, it was kind of ripped and it tore, and it kind of, shredded.

STUART: 

De-laminates.

DA: 

Right. It leaves an ink transfer on to the playa, you know. So, people were starting to learn that. 

Also people were shoving anything they could under their tire wheels to get out of there. And then also once they got traction and they hightail it out of there, they were like, “Oh, I’m sorry, I left that t-shirt, or those boots” or whatever, it was anything you could see that we’re just under these wheel wells, which made things complicated. 

So there were areas where it was super easy. And there were areas where there were complications, mainly the roads where it left things like tire ruts. And so we saw things that were surprises. And then we had to alter our normal game plan. 

Our mission is to MOOP sweep the entirety of those 3600 acres, or 157 million square feet, which is why your square footage means so much. Your Leave No Trace effort in doing those MOOP sweeps in your camp, and being responsible for those camps, is huge for us. 

But we also had to factor in how we flatten the playa, especially where those ruts were dug in, that mud that dried up, we needed to flatten that because we love our playa flat. That’s the way our playa’s supposed to be. Leaving no trace, making it look like it never happened. However, we needed to MOOP those ruts first, and then we needed to flatten them.

STUART: 

And then you had to MOOP them again after the heavy machinery had gone through, right, because it turned stuff up?

DA: 

And then we had to MOOP again. Correct. So that is the complicated effort. 

We picked up the most MOOP that we’ve ever picked up before, based off of looking at the dumpsters that we filled up. We filled it right up to the rim. So this was a hard-fought victory to get everything up off the ground as possible. 

And we test ourselves before we take the test. And the way the test is, you put a tent stake into the ground and then tie off a 38 foot rope. Then you line people up six feet apart, or arms-width apart along that rope, and then you MOOP sweep the radius. Alright? You MOOP sweep the radius. That amount of MOOP gets put into a bag, and you look at that, and basically, if the MOOP in that bag is bigger than 3.8 square inches, which is, it’s tiny. It’s not that big, that’s a fail. That is the actual inspection. 

I can get into the whole math of it, but that gets really nerdy and really complicated. Basically what you need to know is when we self-test ourselves, the MOOP cannot be bigger than 3.8 inches. And we test ourselves through Resto that follows up our MOOP sweeps, and we could tell that we were trending for a nail-biter of a finish. We knew it was going to be close.

STUART: 

How do we get to MOOP zero? I think it starts with mindset. If people are going into it and saying that I am going to always be MOOPing, right? For instance, when I’m out on deep playa, I will stop when I see some crap and I will pick it up and I will take it back to camp. I’m always on the lookout for it, and I never assume it’s somebody else’s problem, somebody else’s responsibility. If you see it, pick it up, right? 

What else can we do? Think about during the build process, during build week for camps. I know that’s an exceptionally MOOPy time for some people. What are some ways we could mitigate in advance MOOP during build?

DA: 

Well, we need to prioritize and understand, visualize, what the actual MOOP is. MOOP is, if you took everything that you do at your camp and everything that happened at Burning Man, and you threw it in a blender and you tossed it out, you tossed like the debris out into the open playa. That’s what MOOP is. 

Yes, it starts off big. “Pack it in, pack it out.” You folded up that big tarp. You broke down your shade structure. That could be MOOP. That’s not what we’re finding at the end. People generally know to be responsible. You brought it there. Take it home. 

MOOP is debris. And so we just need to imagine that things are breaking and shedding. We’re always shedding out there. And that’s really what MOOP is by the point that it shows up on the inspection. So by prioritizing… like once upon a time, wood debris was the number one MOOP. And this was because wood is the most common material used out there. Back in the day it’s like, you dragged all the lumber out there and we built it on site, we cut it on site, and the sawdust is flying around and the sawdust is now churned into the dust and the surface, and then you’ve got a bunch of MOOP there. 

The, “Oh, it’s organic,” just doesn’t fly. That wood does not belong there. Okay. So that needs to be swept up. People know this now, but again it’s good to say “Wood is MOOP” you guys, all right? So you should have a tarp on the ground, sweep up that wood. You have the logs that you’re going to throw into your burn barrel, that when you take that stack of wood, and you just toss it near the burn barrel and it hits the ground, all of that wood debris breaks into bark, and that bark is the MOOP that you’re going to be picking up at the end. Now, if you had a tarp there, or a rug, and you just put it on top of that, that’s where it stays. Things like that. So preventative targeting, imagining that everything you do actually becomes and sheds into debris and MOOP.

Now the biggest thing, and here it is the number one MOOP. And I understand that it helps in efficiency and safety, but lag bolts are now the number one MOOP, by far. And that is a problem because they are spikes in the ground that will pop tires. And it has had a meteoric rise. Since 2019 in our MOOP data, we found about 100, we picked about 100 lag bolts. But in 2022, coming back from the pandemic, there was 1,000 lag bolts in the ground. 1,000.

STUART: 

Do the people who are left behind don’t know how to take them out of the ground or they don’t see them? Or, how can that happen?

DA: 

All of the above is happening. They’re leaving them in the ground, or they’re forgetting them, or they lost them. But there’s no excuse. They need to be picked up. 

And we sounded the alarm in 2022. We said, “Hey, you guys need to be accountable for your lag bolts. If you’re putting them in, it’s strapping down some massive structure. So wherever you’re strapping it down, know that that needs to come up.” Alright? It’s simple. But for some reason in 2023 we went from 1000 to 1500. And this is costly, and it’s 1500. And if you imagine if we didn’t find any of those 1500s, you have a landmine. Alright? And that’s what we can’t have. This is a safety issue. This is a MOOP issue. And it is something that needs to come down. We are watching this. And we have let people know that this is seriously on our radar, and we need people to be accountable for their lag bolts. So if you have these pop up structures that have become really popular that are lag bolted into the ground, remove those lag bolts the same way you put them in. You account for them, if you have to GPS them, if you have to tie something off on them so that you visually see them.

STUART: 

Hey there’s an idea: spray paint the heads in a bright color. In my camp, we had really good results when we switched to using colored screws for putting things together, because a plain, metal screw after it’s been sitting in the playa dust looks like playa dust, right? Color is good. 

Pre-construction, though. I just want to go back to that. Why not just do all your cutting before you get there and clean your shit up. Did I tell you about the year that we found pine needles all over our camp?

DA: 

Yes.

STUART: 

Because one of our guys parked his trailer out behind his house in the woods and didn’t blow it out before he got there, right? So we we’re picking up goddamned pine needles the whole week.

DA: 

We had an influx of that this year, but we think what happens is like, people who are camping, who lived by the forest and they do have pine needles, all of that does get into the grooves of their vehicles, and then they come out to Burning Man. And then it might not be an issue until it rains really hard and it washes through all those grooves. And then all of a sudden we start seeing them, like, all over, and like, what happened? Did people start bringing Christmas trees this year? Actually, here’s a tip. Wash your car before, wash your vehicle before you come to Burning Man!

STUART: 

Hey DA, if you wanted to talk to participants and give them one good tip in maybe three words or less, what would it be?

DA: 

Do that MOOP test…

STUART: 

Nope. Fewer words.

DA: 

MOOP. Test. Camp.

STUART: 

Come on. I’m waiting for it.

DA: 

Leave No Trace!

STUART: 

What? I can’t hear you.

DA: 

Leave No Trace! Yeah, that’s the rally cry.

STUART: 

LEAVE NO TRACE!

–

STUART: 

Okay, kittens. What did we learn today? Well…

From Uncle Hazmatt, we learned that there is such a thing as industrial garlic, and we’re actually growing it with our bodily excreta.

From mr. blue we heard that crushing cans is fun — good, clean, fun, and fun for kids. 

From Barbarella, we learned to take the insulation off our windows before we roll out, to not TP the sagebrush, and to please-and-thank-you not to leave pee jugs on the side of the road. 

And from DA we learned to MOOP-sweep, to pre-test, and how to shout LEAVE NO TRACE in a really, really inspirational way. 

 

Burning Man LIVE is a production of the Philosophical Center of Burning Man Project — yes, that’s a thing — recorded in our imaginary studio high above the ethereal wavicles of the global network, and processed in a secret underground facility that’s not on any map, so, don’t bother looking. 

Our power, water, bar tabs, and other utilities are subsidized by the generous listeners who slip us a few pesos now and then at donate.burningman.org. 

Thanks to all of you for listening, and go ahead, tell a friend about us. We really don’t care. 

We’re on the internet as live.burningman.org, reachable by good old fashioned emails at live@burningman.org, and, of course, you can follow us on all the socials as @burningmanlive.

I’m Stuart Mangrum. This time around our little combo featured Vav Michael Vav on lead guitar, ActionGirl on bass, Alliesaurus on keys, kbot on the clave, Rocky on the gong, and Tyler Burger on that sweet glockenspiel solo. Thanks again, and as always, thanks Larry.

---

more