GoKawiilAt the end of April, I ran a short campaign to find 15 more paying members of Not-Ship. And we did it! Thank you to the wonderful souls who chose to back this work. It means the world to me.
💙 Amanda
Each year, 70,000 people gather on a dry lakebed in Nevada to build a city from scratch. This is Black Rock City, home to the infamous Burning Man event. Eight days later, it's gone.
But 150 people remain. They line up — side by side, an arms width apart — and slowly walk the 3,800 acres (15.4 km²) of dusty playa. They're looking for MOOP: Matter Out of Place. A screw, a sequin, a cigarette butt.
This forensic-style sweep takes weeks; everything they find is removed and logged. At the end, they're left with a remarkable accounting of what 70,000 people left behind: The MOOP Map. And I'm obsessed.
The Burning Man 2025 MOOP Map
Indicates effort and time spent on MOOP cleanup across Black Rock City.
The map is colour-coded by severity of cleanup. Yellow indicates moderate MOOP conditions, where crews slow their pace to make sure nothing is missed. Red are the zones most heavily affected — difficult enough to stop progress entirely.
"In simple terms, the MOOPier an area is, the more labour and field time it takes to clean until crews are no longer finding debris," Dominic Tinio, who goes by DA, explained to me. As Burning Man's Environmental Restoration Manager, he's in charge of the MOOP process.
The future of the community depends on getting this right. Black Rock City is only allowed to return to the playa each year if it passes a strict post-event inspection from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM): No more than one square foot of debris can remain per acre (0.23 m²/ha).
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