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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 impre

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.

gosub100 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.
      - gosub100 4mo ago
        Defeats "the purpose" - of maximizing profits? In this case I agree with you.
        donkers 4mo ago
        It’s run by a literal non-profit. You clearly have no clue what the event is like or how it’s managed. Edit: You can even see their financials here https://burningman.org/about-us/what-we-do/financials-public-reporting/ https://burningman.org/about-us/what-we-do/financials-public...
        ileonichwiesz 4mo ago
        What I’m seeing in that link is that the organization pays 16 people a total of $3.6 million.
      - komali2 4mo ago
        This is the fundamental contradiction of Burning Man values, and I admit to obnoxiously pursuing it around the fire these past three burns now. Burning Man is a community and society, and often pitches itself that way, and attendees come away feeling that way - they're "Burners," any city in the world they go to they can probably find other Burners they've never met and hang out, and to truly understand the Burn you really just have to attend. But the values, and event, and many attendees, reject this fact with the "radical self reliance" value. People try to work around it by doing Theme camps - tribes within a tribe. Oh you're self reliant all right, you and the rest of your suburb with whom you organized to bring water and toilet paper. But no no no, that line stops at the edge of your camp, beyond that lies only community WITHOUT responsibility. In reality there is no community without responsibility. MOOP blows around. Your sound affects other people. And if someone is suffering from thirst or hunger at the Burn, you absolutely have a responsibility to them as a member of your community to share food and water. This radical self reliance thing just shifts the burden of managing people to the theme camp level, without any guarantee that any given theme camp is actually itself a good member of the community (other than processes that take a while e.g. the MOOP map). The Burn is big but so are towns. There's already infrastructure for sewage, there should be as well for trash, and imo food and shelter as well. That doesn't require violating any of the principles, and a form of "radical self reliance" can be maintained through "radical participation" wherein people can identify a problem they want to resolve about the Burn and resolve it, or organize a working group or syndic to do so.
    - pdntspa 4mo ago
      You might want to familiarize yourself with the ten principles. Trash service would undermine some of those tenets
      - gosub100 4mo ago
        I don't need to do that. I already see the scam. Socialize the waste and privatize the profit. The mask was blown off years ago.
        pdntspa 4mo ago
        Are you on the outside looking in or are/were you an active burning man participant?
        komali2 4mo ago
        You're right minus the profits, nobody's really making any money off the Burn except maybe fancy RV rental places or whatever.
- kayfox 4mo ago
  That subreddit complains about trash dumping the other 11 months of the year, its just for a little while it can all be blamed on Burning Man. (Also, despite having lived in Portland, Reno seems to be the worse city in my experience with people complaining about everything on Reddit.)
  - gosub100 4mo ago
    So if I found a newspaper article about it, you would change your mind?
phillmv 4mo 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 4mo ago
  Participants also have to feel like they are part of the event rather than passive spectators.
  - socalgal2 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.
browningstreet 4mo ago
There are volunteer opportunities to help clean-up after the 4th of July festivities in Tahoe.
stouset 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
[dead]
seb1204 4mo ago
Japanese visitors were applauded for cleaning up after themselves in the stadium. So it is an attitude thing too.
Litost 4mo 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 4mo 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.

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.

gosub100 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.
    - gosub100 4mo ago
      Defeats "the purpose" - of maximizing profits? In this case I agree with you.
      - donkers 4mo ago
        It’s run by a literal non-profit. You clearly have no clue what the event is like or how it’s managed. Edit: You can even see their financials here https://burningman.org/about-us/what-we-do/financials-public-reporting/ https://burningman.org/about-us/what-we-do/financials-public...
        ileonichwiesz 4mo ago
        What I’m seeing in that link is that the organization pays 16 people a total of $3.6 million.
    - komali2 4mo ago
      This is the fundamental contradiction of Burning Man values, and I admit to obnoxiously pursuing it around the fire these past three burns now. Burning Man is a community and society, and often pitches itself that way, and attendees come away feeling that way - they're "Burners," any city in the world they go to they can probably find other Burners they've never met and hang out, and to truly understand the Burn you really just have to attend. But the values, and event, and many attendees, reject this fact with the "radical self reliance" value. People try to work around it by doing Theme camps - tribes within a tribe. Oh you're self reliant all right, you and the rest of your suburb with whom you organized to bring water and toilet paper. But no no no, that line stops at the edge of your camp, beyond that lies only community WITHOUT responsibility. In reality there is no community without responsibility. MOOP blows around. Your sound affects other people. And if someone is suffering from thirst or hunger at the Burn, you absolutely have a responsibility to them as a member of your community to share food and water. This radical self reliance thing just shifts the burden of managing people to the theme camp level, without any guarantee that any given theme camp is actually itself a good member of the community (other than processes that take a while e.g. the MOOP map). The Burn is big but so are towns. There's already infrastructure for sewage, there should be as well for trash, and imo food and shelter as well. That doesn't require violating any of the principles, and a form of "radical self reliance" can be maintained through "radical participation" wherein people can identify a problem they want to resolve about the Burn and resolve it, or organize a working group or syndic to do so.
  - pdntspa 4mo ago
    You might want to familiarize yourself with the ten principles. Trash service would undermine some of those tenets
    - gosub100 4mo ago
      I don't need to do that. I already see the scam. Socialize the waste and privatize the profit. The mask was blown off years ago.
      - pdntspa 4mo ago
        Are you on the outside looking in or are/were you an active burning man participant?
      - komali2 4mo ago
        You're right minus the profits, nobody's really making any money off the Burn except maybe fancy RV rental places or whatever.
kayfox 4mo ago
That subreddit complains about trash dumping the other 11 months of the year, its just for a little while it can all be blamed on Burning Man. (Also, despite having lived in Portland, Reno seems to be the worse city in my experience with people complaining about everything on Reddit.)
- gosub100 4mo ago
  So if I found a newspaper article about it, you would change your mind?

phillmv 4mo 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 4mo ago
Participants also have to feel like they are part of the event rather than passive spectators.
- socalgal2 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.

browningstreet 4mo ago

There are volunteer opportunities to help clean-up after the 4th of July festivities in Tahoe.

stouset 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago

[dead]

seb1204 4mo ago

Japanese visitors were applauded for cleaning up after themselves in the stadium. So it is an attitude thing too.

Litost 4mo 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 4mo 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.