Camp Nose Fish LNT Plan
Our Leave-no-trace plan is our mutual commitment to a Burning Man experience with zero-impact on the playa. We all see taking
care of the playa as our personal responsibility. We will all help each other remember and fulfil this commitment.
We've been an Earth Guardian "Model Camp" in 2004, 2005, and 2006 and we won "Camp of the Day" in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2010. The
Earth Guardians have helped us refine our practices and we've embraced many of their suggestions.
Our holistic approach is to not make a mess in the first
place! We'll bring less and store it better. We'll
make it easier for anyone else in our camp to secure our
stuff rather than relying on luck to ensure that someone
gets someone else's stuff secured during a storm. We're ready for a storm whenever it happens.
That coupled with our normal vigilance will mean less time spent cleaning
up for everyone and less chances of debris blowing away that
someone else will have to clean up for us.
Responsibility
Laura Szymanski is our LNT expert and main liaison with the Earth Guardians. She is committed to overseeing all LNT practices in the camp and ensuring that all camp members comply with our cleanup plan from our initial arrival on the playa until we all leave. Laura is also our Recycling Guru, who ensures we all recycle what can be recycled.
Less is More
Our philosophy is: less is more
We bring less stuff that doesn't matter and
spend more time enjoying Burning Man.
We'll certainly bring fun stuff like costumes, domes, camping equipment,
art projects, etc., that
allow us to interact with our fellow citizens of BRC. And
we'll bring things to keep ourselves comfortable and well-fed regardless of the conditions. Of course we'll have tools and a few extra materials -- we have to anticipate
the unexpected to reasonably balance the will of the desert. But
we're making a conscious effort to bring less and do more
with it.
Significant Improvements
We have some special challenges this year because of our Quesadilla! and EL Wire Repair servies. Here's our plan for managing them:
- We will have a floor on combined Quesadilla! and EL Wire Repair Dome (aka the service dome) to catch any spills, bits of wire and other soldering debris.
- We'll have a wind screen around the service dome to keep wind from blowing freely through it. The windscreen will come all the way to the ground, so that any materials and supplies inside the dome cannot escape simply by blowing along the ground.
- We are planning for extra space in our vehicles for the return trip so we have room for whatever moop we collect as well as the inevitable debris people leave in our public spaces. We're planning from the beginning for the moop we'll have at the end.
Personal Containment Domes
This year we have two large, covered shared domes and one personal dome. The
domes will be covered with tarps in a manner that makes it
easy to secure in a hurry by any of our camp members when
there is a windstorm. One of the shared domes acts as our combined kitchen and storage area. The other is our camp's private lounge area. These areas will be protected from wind so that debris does not blow away using wind cloth. All of our domes have tarps on the floor to protect the playa from spills and to keep debris from getting ground into the playa.
People will keep their items either in the kitchen dome or in their tents or vehicles.
The bottom line is that everyone in our camp has a place to keep their stuff
so it won't blow away, whether they are there to protect
it or not. Someone is always at our camp, and anyone in
our camp will be able to close all the domes or tents quickly.
Things we all do:
- Minimize packaging before we go to Burning Man
- Not dump untreated graywater on the playa or in the
porta-potties (gray water = shower water, dish water)
- Not spit toothpaste on the playa
- Use porta-potties exactly and only for body waste.
Toothpaste is OK in the porta-pottie (if you can
get past the idea of brushing your teeth in an
outhouse)
- Not burn anything on the playa. Use a burn platform
for burnable debris (paper, wood), or a Burning Man
approved firepit.
- Not dig holes in the playa except as required to secure
a structure (e.g. for rebar).
- Not bring any of the following:
- pistachios or any other nuts in shells
- feather boas or other clothing with bits that can come
off in the wind
- loose glitter or glitter glued to artwork unless it
is sealed with a clearcoat (e.g. clear krylon
spraypaint).
- confetti or anything like it! Bad! No!!
- clothing or artwork with bits that always fly off
in the wind
- individually wrapped candies (generates lots of tiny trash)
- meaningless schwag -- our gift to the community is our theme camp and our projects. We won't be giving away tiny trinkets. We believe in a gift economy -- not a barter economy. We don't need extra things to trade. We are always well-stocked with tools and supplies, and we offer their use freely without any expectation for anything in return. Well, we'd like our tools returned... ;-)
- Collect all our everything (trash, equipment, etc.) and take it away from Burning Man
- Clean up our personal camp space, including all debris,
rebar stakes in the ground, etc. We promise to ask for
help if we can't get a piece of rebar out -- our camp has
tools to get the job done.
- Keep our gear inside our domes, vehicles and tents and be ready to
close them up in case of a storm.
- At the onset of any storm, secure the
domes and tents as quickly as possible.
- Secure our own domes if we know we and everyone
who lives in it with us will be away on an adventure.
Opportunities to even the score
The truth is that despite our best efforts some of our
debris will blow away, or some gift we give someone will
end up releasing or becoming debris.
So we need to actively look for opportunities to even
the score before we can achieve anything close to zero net impact.
- We Pick up MOOP (matter-out-of-place) wherever we see it
- We find a gentle way to raise the awareness of anyone
else who litters. Maybe just smile and say "Here, let me
pick that up for you."
- We bring a trashbag sometimes when we go adventuring.
Camp Responsibilities
A group of us will remain until Sunday, August 31. Those
that do will comprise the final camp cleanup team. The
cleanup team has the responsibility to complete the
cleanup of our camp. At that point it should not be
a huge amount of work because every one of us will have
cleaned up our own area. We are each of us the cleanup team
for our own camping spot.
The cleanup team will:
- Make a shoulder-to-shoulder sweep of the entire camp
and our annex camp if we have one. We will pick up
anything that isn't playa or a black rock.
- Rake and scrape the surface of our camp to help
remove dust covered debris and even out any unnatural
piles and fill small holes. We also sweep the entire
camp with a magnetic bar attached to the back of the rake,
to pick up nuts and bolts, etc.
Handling Gray Water
We collect all our treatable gray water and treat it with a combination of filtration and chemicals, so it is safe and sane to pour on the roads. We collect the rest of our
gray and waste water and bring it back
to an RV park where we dump it in an appropriate sewer for
proper water treatment. Untreatable gray water includes
shower water that may contain glitter or body paint,
kitchen water, etc. We bring 5-gallon buckets with lids to contain
our gray water. WE ABSOLUTELY NEVER POUR OUR GRAY WATER
IN THE PORTA-POTTIES!! We only treat shower water that is free of glitter and body paint. We collect gray water separately from each shower, so we can make a choice on a shower-by-shower basis as to whether the gray water is treatable or not. Click here for complete details on our water handling technique.
Handling Garbage
We use heavy-duty garbage bags to contain the lighter
duty "kitchen" bags we use in our domes and tents. We secure our large
garbage bags inside our kitchen dome, or in the small storage dome, to prevent any chance of their blowing away. We also try to minimize how much trash we do produce, by minimizing packaging, using crushable packaging, buying in bulk, etc.
As operators of an interactive venue at
Burning Man, we end up carting out far more garbage than
that which we create ourselves. Especially in the last
few days we end up with more than our fair share of debris
we didn't create. We always leave extra room in our
vehicles
for the return trip so we can take away this extra debris,
which we take to the dump.
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