Beware fake trash collectors 2023 edition

[some seeing eye]

From another platform...

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September 25, 2023

Alice's Restaurant Masacree (2023 Playa Edition)

Hey folks,

Chef Juke from the Department of Mutant Vehicles here with a cautionary tale.

As we expect you all should be aware, since the end of the event, the amazing Playa Restoration team has been hard at work making sure that we leave no trace from this year's event. But the cleanup work extends well beyond the playa to along the roads leading to and from the event.

Last week, the DMV was notified of an unfortunate incident. The Playa Restoration team had received a report from a local hunter of a large amount of garbage that had been illegally dumped off the side of a side road near Highway 447 between Empire and Pyramid Lake. It was pretty obvious that the garbage had come from the playa.

So then, the Playa Resto team did what they do: They went and cleaned it up. And while doing so, they noted there were a number of items with people's names on them along with one piece that included the name of a Mutant Vehicle camp. And that's s how it came to the attention of yours truly. Armed with photographs of the dump and pieces with circles and arrows on each one showing the names of the six people on the labels (including one name that matched the camp name written on some of the garbage), I reached out to the MV Owner whose name and camp name were identified to find out what they knew about this.

(For those of you who are familiar with the song Alice's Restaurant, some of this may sound familiar. For those of you who aren't, the link is below.)

At any rate, we work pretty hard to give folks the benefit of the doubt and to assume good intent, but this seemed to be a clear case of Burners doing it wrong. Nevertheless, I sent an email indicating what had happened, and stating that based on the info we had we believed the garbage was from this MV Camp.

Well, it turns out that while some of the garbage was from this camp, some of it was not. The Camp lead I spoke with indicated they had stopped alongside 447 just south of Empire and paid a person with a big truck and trailer to haul off their garbage. They had photos of the interaction and a GPS record showing right where they stopped and paid the guy to take their garbage off their hands. They had one photo of the guy and his trailer full of garbage bags.

They were appalled that the garbage had been dumped and they were extremely apologetic.

And therein lies the tale. These Burners thought they were doing it right. They hauled their garbage off the Playa and then handed it off to these (seemingly) kindly folks who offered them a service at $5 per bag. Such a deal. But in doing so, they ended up, albeit unintentionally, doing themselves and Burning Man a disservice.

Burners get a lot of flack for the garbage that is left alongside 447. And some of that is deserved (at least until we make sure it's cleaned up). There are always folks who either don't secure their load and lose a bag here or there and maybe a handful of folks who do dump intentionally, but the vast majority of the 80,000 of us, do it right.

HOWEVER...

These particular side-of-the-road "we'll dump it for you" folks are hitting us with a double-whammy. They are scamming the good folks who paid them to haul their garbage AND when they dump the stuff, the blame gets put back on the burners who were actually trying to do it right.

So...

Speaking on behalf of...well all of us, I would strongly encourage everyone to take your garbage to an authorized disposal location. Dumping event garbage anywhere other than at an appropriate facility is not only illegal, it is wholly against the principles of our event.

"Leave no Trace":

Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Our survival guide gives many options for where to responsibly take your trash/recycling after the event.

https://survival.burningman.org/.../lea ... beautiful/

I should also note that Burning Man has always strongly encouraged people to use authorized entities. As we state on the website above:

"Beware: While you may encounter other “private enterprises” along the highways willing to take your trash for money, we cannot vouch for their standards of operation. Sometimes these private enterprises do a great job and provide a community service, but some operators have left all of their trash behind at their site after taking your money. No trash should ever be on the ground, it should all be going directly into a dumpster"

Okay, that's all.

Oh, wait: here's that Alice's Restaurant link.


Always worth a listen.

Sincerely,

-Chef Juke
Your Friendly Neighborhood Department of Mutant Vehicles
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