Festivals can be a glorious landscape of music and unity that brings joy to millions of people a year. However, once the crowds are gone that landscape isn’t quite so glorious to gaze upon as the sea of rubbish and abandoned tents is revealed. Every year we see that festival grounds are left in poor states the day after, so what’s being done to prevent this, and what can you do to help?
One of the main things you always see is thousands of tents left behind which contrary to popular belief are usually incinerated instead of donated. Thankfully festivals like Creamfields have a salvage operation in place where charities and community groups are allowed in at the end to collect reusable tents and camping gear. Tomorrowland’s approach to this problem is their ‘Camp2Camp’ scheme where they collect, clean, and repair camping equipment to hire out at future events. Although that Monday morning may hold a horrific hangover at the end of the festival, you still need to make the effort to take your belongings home. It helps the environment, it helps the clean up crew, and it saves you having to buy more equipment for the next festival.
Of course, the other main problem is general rubbish with cups and bottles creating a new layer on top of festival grounds. The type of waste left behind has improved drastically in the last few years with the advent of paper cups and aluminium cans/bottles over plastic. An excellent idea that many festivals have adopted is giving a small amount of money for returning cups which encourages people to not just drop them on the floor. Brands like Liquid Death that provide water in recyclable cans are becoming more frequently seen at festivals even being a title sponsor for Download Festival. This is all encouraging but this waste still needs to be disposed of properly to make this change work. It’s on festivals to provide the correct facilities to dispose of all the rubbish, it’s on festivalgoers to make use of those facilities.
Amidst the rubbish there is always thousands of cigarettes and in the past few years a rapidly increasing number of disposable vapes. Neither of these are biodegradable, and both leak toxins into the soil. Now disposable vapes are more popular festivals are providing electronic waste bins and it’s essential that they are used. Disposable vapes are both harmful to the environment as well as being dangerous if the battery is damaged. On the cigarette front Ultra Music Festival has come up with a simple solution as they provide pocket ashtrays for free so people can keep their cigarette butts till they find a bin.
All these efforts are not only for the environment, but for the continuation of festivals. If the grounds are not looked after, then whoever owns that land may decide to stop hiring it out. The grounds must be respected by festivalgoers as much as the festivalgoers must be respected by the festival itself. Woodstock 1999 didn’t provide adequate waste facilities, and we all know how that went. If everyone does their bit then festivals can continue to thrive, and the world will be a better place for it.
Recommended Comments