Hi, Beautiful Burners!  This is your next level Leave No Trace venue ​

We're proud that barely a sandy imprint remains when we leave the playa, but we still do leave a massive trace from getting there. Our carbon, water, and ecological footprints are ways to measure our "invisible MOOP", the many impacts we have getting to, from, and on the playa. 

Cooling Man estimates:
If 70% of burners reduce or offset one ton of carbon, Black Rock City could be a carbon neutral city.

Maybe if 80% of burners did so we'd be carbon positive, making a positive environmental impact.
And we can work on our water footprints, another important consideration for desert-dwellers.

One of my passion projects has been combining the ways to measure and decrease our negative environmental impacts, below is a cheat sheet that can be of use.  Shine on, burners!
Picture
Image by Daily Overview. To play with cool slidy thing: www.techinsider.io/burning-mans-insane-vanishing-act-2015-10

Measure
​1) If you're feeling keen, measure your personal ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and water footprint.  
2) You can also use Cooling Man's specific calculator for the event itself, note it's focused on carbon/fuel vs. all products consumed etc, but it's cool they developed one just for the playa!  

Reduce
If you can't do something big right now, start with small steps. 
Burning Man and Cooling Man have tips on decreasing your burn's environmental impact.

Support
​What can't be reduced from your footprint at this point in time? 

​Support ecological projects by purchasing high quality offsets (more details and discussion here):
Carbon projects (e.g. round trip SF to Black rock uses about .5 tonnes of carbon)
Water projects (e.g. one round-trip flight from LA to SF uses ~9,000 gallons of water)
Land restoration projects (e.g. average Americans use 9 global hectares of natural resources/year)

Also, we can support cool green initiatives & businesses, such as:
Black Rock Solar
Art for Trees
BIODEGRADABLE GLITTER! 

Inspire
Going to the burn doesn't mean you can't be an awesome eco-champion, it may even inspire you to dream bigger and better heights that will make the planet much better off

Dig Deeper
​The above is just a "cheat sheet" for people who want to get down to business, explore this site and others from the links above to learn much more about our full environmental footprints.

Feel free to contact us with any specific questions or ideas!
Header image credit to Chris Dunphy