Green Year

Later today Rachel’s going to ping the theme camp list with an incredible offer: the City Of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment, with whom she’s worked on Scrap Eden and other projects, will be bringing several huge dumpsters to the playa this year, and will be distributing 100 de-logoed green municipal trash bins.  The goal? Composting. Specifically, collecting all the compostable waste from event operations like the cafe, plus as much as they can handle from 100 lucky theme camps.

Post event, it will all be hauled to the Jepson processing facility in Sacramento. The resultant organic compost will end up on vineyards in northern California.
It’s like some weird sister city program, and on the surface it doesn’t make any sense: why go all the way there, to haul garbage? The answer lies in who Burning Man/Burners are, our relationship to San Francisco, and the power of thinking outside the box. The city needs to increase composting, period. Doing so has huge benefits, all over the place. So they could do the usual–go to green events, hand out flyers, that sort of thing. Or, they can come to the event and let people see the benefit first hand, in an environment where they’re hyper sensitized to garbage. Figure 1/2 the people on the playa are from SF, that means thousands of people seeing and experiencing the benefit of composting, and taking that home with them.  Makes a lot more sense that putting up another bus billboard or the like.

Only in San Francisco would we have a bureaucrat who can see the potential here, then help realize it. Everybody wins, and again, BMORG isn’t stepping in to do it for people, rather they’re letting the answer spontaneously emerge. Someone will find a reason to criticize this, I’m certain of that, but then again, those that don’t often criticize those that do. I favor the later type myself.

right again, as usual. if he had any lower a center of gravity, he’d be a potted plant.

So, back to it. Today we picked up another exhibitor, working on a display about seeding the ocean to generate plankton growth, which will absorb carbon. we’ll put em with the ship kite people, good combo.

Majana, Treehugger and Current TV will be promoting a contest to see who can come up with the best open source solution to the global environmental crisis. Winner gets to come to the event, show off their stuff, have it featured on Current’s coverage. Two media outlets, working together to get the word out on a completely unbranded, open source, best-in-class environmental solution. Talk about inverting the paradigm; it’s exactly the sort of thing we’d hoped this year would do.

And so it is.

On another note, amazing how the background noise falls off when you stop leaning out the window and listening to it, and instead focus on the task at hand. Actions speak louder than words, and are much more lasting. That Ted, right again…

It’s too bad, really. There was a moment, a while ago, when I thought this site would be a great place to capture my thoughts about this year’s event, and the lessons learned from it.

But then I realized the degree to which some people have nothing better to do than constantly look for something to fear, something to criticize. I started fearing that my words would be thrown back at me, months later, and that people wouldn’t take the time, or the care, to differentiate between my personal, evolving opinions, and my public facing job.

Which is exactly what has happened.  There’s probably not a single person working for burning man who has been more open, more accessible, more willing to discuss this year’s event on the record than me, except perhaps Andie Grace. And in return, I’ve become a lightning rod for every complaint imaginable. Every slight. You name it, I’ve heard it.

Suspecting that would become the case caused me to stop reflecting in this space, a decision I now see was warranted. It’s too bad, really. It could have been a good place to see the evolution of an idea unfold. Instead, it’s become a monument to the banality of reflexive fear of change.