The Burning Man art festival is an annual week long gathering of over 40,000 people camping in the Blackrock desert of northern Nevada. The festival is a time of self expression, art and festivities culminating in the burning of a large wooden statue on the Saturday night of the event.
Historically, the Burning Man participants have had a major ecological impact on the desert. The participants tend to show up in fuel intensive RVs or SUVs and run gas powered generators to give the comforts of home. Waste was a problem with some participants leaving it for others to clean up and massive use of disposable containers like plastic water bottles.
For 2007 the art theme for the event was “The Green Man” and the organizers and many of the participants made a concerted effort to “green” up the Burning Man festival. The organizers used biodiesel to fuel all of the organizations vehicles, donated solar power systems to the neighboring towns, and set up carbon offsets to counter the effect of firing up the Burning Man. They also pushed the use of environmentally friendly materials to build any shelters and all lumber will be reused to provide shelters for the poor after the event.
Participants were quite creative in their attempts to be more eco-friendly. The most common examples were the home made solar power systems to replace the generators. Some could provide up to 10,000 watts of power. Biodiesel use was in abundance with 87% of the festival’s generators running on B100. Over 50 of the theme camps had environmentally friendly or low impact themes.
At the end of the festival the Burning Man organizers comb the desert to remove all possible traces of the event. This year they worked to make the festival green and eco-friendly also.
One Comment
This is great. I last attended BMan in 2001 (for the third year in a row). It’s absolutely the best time to be had anywhere.. But there always was for me this disconnect between BMan’s ideals and its solipsism. Glad the organizers have realized that while BMan FEELS like another planet, it’s still part of the climate system here on earth.