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by ghshephard 47 days ago
You are getting a bit of grief down thread- but this is cool as all get out.

The best use of these systems would be to combine the various procedures:

First, and foremost - don't leave garbage behind in the first place. Think twice before bring sequins and feathers in costumes (the biggest culprit in my experience from 2003-2010). Film cannisters for cigarette

Second - Every Camp does a combination of complete-grid clean up on their own "lot" - I've done that three times - and it was honestly great - plus an hour of "community time" - where you walk the play off your lot and clean it up as well. Your camp packs off 99% of the garbage, and then a grid search, plus heavy rake, finds the last 1%. About the only debate my camp ever had was whether it was acceptable to just dump their potable water onto the Playa (I thought it was fine - as long as you didn't just pour it all in one place - within 15 minutes you would be hard pressed to ever find out where it was poured out).

Third - the two-week "walk the line" where the detailed MOOP maps get created. 150 people for a 80,000 person 7+ day festival seems entirely reasonable - and it's a big part of BRC.

Finally (and I really mean do finally, it's almost a thing that shouldn't be really visible) - show up with the heavy gear to find all the submerged stakes/rebare/moop). Just rake the hell out of the Playa (absolutely fine - I've never understood people who think that it's a problem - it really isn't - you sure as hell aren't going to disrupt any ecology - except for a few random sand-fleas - it's entirely devoid of any life) - and the first bit of rain completely and 100% eliminates any trace of what you did.

1 comments

As a practical matter, that's backwards. One pass with the heavy raking machinery will remove 99% of the trash. That's the heavy lifting. Record GPS-tagged video of what the rakes are picking up. Then make a pass with a strong trash magnet on a pickup truck to get small ferrous metallic junk that made it past the rakes. Then do a foreign object walkdown with the team, to catch sequins, nonmagnetic stainless steel needles, and rebar and lag bolts that need to be pried or dug out. It's the final inspection that needs humans.

Do you have to clean up glitter?

Yes, we clean up glitter, paint chips, oil stains, rust debris, etc.