Can 'Burning Man' Become a Model for Green Living?

Can 45,000 people journey vast distances to a lifeless Nevada desert and participate in an environmentally sustainable festival devoted to burning stuff? As strange as it sounds, during the last week of August 2007, the annual hedonistic celebration Burning Man attempted to do just that: go 'green.'

What has Burning Man done to merit its theme, The Green Man? Is Burning Man making serious efforts to green itself, or is it all a front, a form of greenwashing? How will the Burning Man experience affect burners, and will they bring it home into their lives? What does the Green Man art theme say about the state of civilization and its trajectory? It was in search of answers to these questions and others unimagined that the author trekked to the playa this year.

A certain segment of the Burning Man community has long made respect for the environment a high priority. For years, event organizers have promoted a "leave no trace" ethic and encouraged all participants to scour campsites down to the tiniest scraps.

The under-appreciated Earth Guardians work year-round to keep the playa clean and tidy, and ensure that "burn scars" don't deface the desert. Burners Without Borders, a group of volunteers vowing to "bring it home," journeyed to the Hurricane Katrina destruction zone in 2005 to provide an estimated one million dollars worth of free home demolitions to help property owners clear away wreckage from the disaster. Last year, the same group salvaged six semi trucks full of reclaimed wood from the festival and donated it to Habitat for Humanity. (This year, a Burning Man spokesperson says it was even more).

But in the past few years, participants have demanded a much higher level of environmental responsibility. Just keeping the desert free from "MOOP" (matter out of place) was not enough.

According to Kachina Katrina Zavalney, volunteer coordinator for Burning Man's Green Team, at last year's burn, "I was walking around feeling unhappy -- not like I had a chip on my shoulder, but more like, 'Gosh, people think this place is so progressive, but yet it smells so bad from all the generators, it's so loud, there's not a lot that people can say about the environmental efforts or what's being done out here."

An alliance of like-minded volunteers converged around the Green Theme for 2007. The task was daunting.

"The idea of building a sustainable, temporary city in the middle of nowhere on its face is preposterous. There's no frame against which our work here can be compared except ourselves?because no one else does what we do. Given that, I think what we've been able to accomplish is extraordinary," said Tom Price, environmental manager for the Green Man theme.

Nobel peace laureate Al Gore, whose cable network Current TV was onsite to document the event, expressed optimism about the playa's green prospects.

"I think it's just great that the people of Black Rock City have made the Green Man this year's theme for Burning Man, and I hope that folks will use TV Free Burning Man as a platform to spread that great message even further," said the former vice president.

"Because we build the city from the ground up we're able to look at everything and change whatever we want to on a dime. So, we've looked at transportation, solid waste, materials, energy, art, media, everything, all aspects of the event," Price added.

Analyzing the environmental sustainability of a city of more than 45,000 people is a monumental task. Given space constraints, we'll examine a few elements: electricity, water, fuel, carbon, education, and the future.

Electrifying the Playa

This year, Burning Man LLC ("the LLC") worked with a team of Berkeley engineers from The Shipyard to install a 30-kilowatt solar photovoltaic (PV) array in the shape of the Native, sacred Zia Sun symbol. The array powered the pedestal underneath the iconic man statue and the surrounding Green Pavilion. (Such an array could power approximately 10 to 20 San Francisco homes). Batteries stored extra energy during the day so the man could glow green all night.