What Can You Do To Make Black Rock City Greener? 
You have done your best to leave no trace, even recycled cans and helped with restoration efforts in the Black Rock NCA, but we, as a city 35,000 strong, have a myriad of impacts on the environment. Even though Black Rock City is a temporary community in the Black Rock NCA, and we leave only tire tracks, the way we plan ahead and prepare could have an impact on our home communities and communities along the road. As citizens of the planet, we all wish for more green and sustainable products and practices, to reduce the threats of global warming and exhausted natural resources. Especially considering that we are 35,000 strong, consider your impacts and like everything else we experience on the playa, let's consider taking some greener resources and practices back to our communities around the world
Environmental Footprint
How do your typically daily activities impact our plant? You can use a footprint calculator to estimate the resources that you consume. What is your environmental footprint?
 Why should you care? - Our world is heating up and there is stronger evidence that most of the warming over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities. We have altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere through the buildup of greenhouse gases – primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. This warming could result in changes in rainfall patterns, a rise in sea levels, and a wide range of impacts on plants, wildlife and our lives.
What is the man's footprint? Since the residents of Black Rock City shape the event, all of our impacts contribute to the events footprint. We drive from all over the county, purchase items to survive in the harsh playa environment, participate in Black Rock City, then collect our waste and drive back to our homes away from the playa. The Cooling Man group has been formed to examine our impacts and help to obtain a greater amount of greenhouse gas offsets to more than neutralize our emissions on our planet. What is your burning footprint? Learn more about an effort to make the burn carbon neutral, and contribute to help offset your impacts by visiting Cooling Man,
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The 6 Burner R's - Respect, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Restore
 We made choices that have impacts on the environment every day. How do we make the best choices? Paper or plastic, coffee or green tea, bike or transit - it's all a bit overwhelming. Since we're residents of Black Rock City - let's start by focusing on what we can do to make our burn greener!
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Respect - How did the choices I made regarding my camp, how I'm getting to Burning Man, what I do while I'm there, what I give away and what I take home respect the environment and other residents of Black Rock City?
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Rethink - Can I rethink what I need to survive? What items did I really enjoy having last year, what didn't I use?
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Reduce - Do I need to bring everything that I did last year? Reconsider bringing that extra thing, you can probably survive and even thrive without it. Consider living lighter on the playa.
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Reuse - What can be used year after year? Do I bring reusable water jugs? Can I repurpose, reconfigure and redecorate my basic camp structure?
- Recycle - Did I bring aluminum cans for recycling in center camp! This is a no brainer to reduce your trash and contribute to the local community.
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Restore - How can I help leave the playa the profoundly barren and empty corner of the world that it is? Are there ways I can leave positive traces on the environment?
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Repurposed Structures: Plan your camp around reusing your structure each year. It is smarter to repurpose structures instead of transporting wood hundreds of miles from your local home depot, building a temporary structure, then either burning it or transporting it back more hundreds of miles to a dump or even a local recycling center. If you reuse and repurpose the basic framework for your camp's structure, you can still reconfigure it to give your camp a new look and feel each year and save money! |
Gifting
"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."
- Kahlil Gibran
Please remember this though when you're thinking about bringing that small trinket to give as a playa gift. Many of these small trinkets drop to the ground and become MOOP. Instead, consider sharing your knowledge, your playa survival skills, your hospitality, a back rub, and your smile.
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Sustainable Products
At the Burning Man office, environmentally friendly, green products have reached into the San Francisco headquarters, thanks to the influence of the Recycle Camp manager. |
What makes a given product "green"? How do you evaluate the relative greenness of different products? How do you find green products? How do you understand life-cycle environmental impacts of a product? Yet more tough questions and choices! To help us burners though this maze of choices, a group of participants is working with Burning Man to compile a list of greener products. To learn more - check out their resource guide. Additional information on green products can be found at the Green Century Institute web site.
How do we keep from using green products in dumb ways? Reusable and recycled materials may be better than renewable ones. Conservation and locally source products may be preferable to recycled materials transported across long distances. Making the best choice can drive you a little crazy! It's all about context; what is the product being used for, what are the energy costs associated with transport, do I really need to buy it? And don't forget, what works at home may be different at Burning Man.
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Alternative Energy
 In Black Rock city we light up the desert night - like no other city. Of course the power behind those lights can come from many different sources. Some camps, such as those located in the Alternative Energy Zone, sustain on alternative energy forms such as solar and wind power. For burners interested in pursuing greener alternative energy sources, their web site contains designs and links to many of their playa-tested projects and links to suppliers of alternative energy products.
Another group pursuing greener power sources on the playa is the Burn Clean Project. This group has the goal of converting all of Black Rock City's energy from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, biodiesel and people power. In 2006, they hope to work with Burning Man to convert the power grid for Center Camp to biodiesel and hope to educate art car users about the of biodiesel. To find out more about their efforts, check out the Burn Clean Project.
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The Evolutionary Center is a theme camp that has emerged out of the Greening Burning Man movement, which is focused around creating a more sustainable BRC culture, and integrating some of the methods we use in the "real world," such as permaculture. The camp will be providing workshops, resources and tools to educate and inspire Black Rock City citizens to live more softly on the Earth, both on the playa and off, collaborating with other "green camps" to unify the mission of greening Burning Man.
Burners without Borders
This volunteer group takes our values off the playa and out into the rest of the world. Projects in 2006 included a massive wood-recycling project on the playa and worldwide beach cleanup events. Their goals continue to expand in 2007. Find out more at their web site.
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What More Can You Do?
This network of action-oriented participants continues to grow in strength, numbers, and expertise. The green network is growing into a larger BRC community that can uniquely combine fun with information, education, outreach, and action. New connections and collaborations are continually forming, with additional groups planning elaborate, environmentally minded theme camps and even "how-to" educational series in San Francisco and other cities. Interested in doing more? Start with your camp - make your camp as Green as it can be - develop a green plan. Want to join in on any of these larger efforts to make Burning Man Green? email greeningman-list at burningman.com
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