Burning Man provides no means to do anything except burn things. There is no trash service, no recycling service (at least sponsored by the event), and nothing but “encouragement” to pack it out. There is a theme camp (Recycle Camp) that will recycle for you, and that’s great, but it isn’t run by the organization that puts on the event.

Largely, it becomes the world’s largest “leave no trace” event simply because there’s a massive crew of people who spend multiple months on the desert of Nevada (Black Rock desert, near Gerlach) picking up every last scrap left behind. Sure, there’s a lot of people who pick up their own crap and pack it out, but there’s a whole load that don’t.

Burning Man doesn’t support ride sharing of any kind, and every year thousands of people drive to the desert hauling amazing amounts of stuff (call it what you will, art or crap). There is no carbon offset in the price of a ticket to participate.

Many people chose to take an RV to the event, since it can be hot and incredibly dusty. Generators are running everywhere, and the event organizers do nothing to encourage people to make different decisions.

Everything must be brought to the desert, so there is very little local sourcing of anything at all, which only adds to the amount of fuel necessary to get there. This usually includes huge amounts of packaging, as most people are without refrigeration and are surviving on food that has been packaged to extend its shelf life.

It seems a novelty to include Burning Man on this list of events where the organizers are doing great work to make their events eco friendly. Burning Man is fun, but as far as eco-friendly, I think that’s intentionally left to the power of the attendees rather than being driven by the organization to maintain any level of eco.