Youth of today? Every festival I've ever been to since 98 has been a riot at the end up.
It's nothing new, and it ain't going to change.
On another note, I do despair for the youth of today if they can’t even handle three or four nights on the sesh and carrying their kit back to the car park without their poor little legs hurting.
Guess they'll just have to pay a bit extra to have someone else pick up their rubbish then.
Yes it looks real messy and it's a crap attitude from the punters but I'm not sure that 'festival waste' is that high up on the environmental disaster list.
Flame away.
Guess they’ll just have to pay a bit extra to have someone else pick up their rubbish then.
That chicken was already egged upthread.
Or was it an egg getting chickened?
Cretin
In my mailbox from the Cropredy crew yesterday:
'EMBARGO: 9am May 8 2019
Fairport’s Cropredy Convention backs call
to say ‘no’ to single-use tents
Festival-goers urged to take tents home for re-use
Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, Oxfordshire’s longest-established music festival, today backed a campaign to tackle the problem of single-use plastics.
Together with over 60 other music festivals across the UK, Cropredy organisers today called on big retailers such as Argos and Tesco to stop marketing ‘festival tents’ as single-use items.
The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) estimates 250,000 tents are left at music festivals across the UK. Many festival-goers believe the tents are collected and given to charity but, claims AIF, the majority go to landfill. At an average of 3.5kg each tent is the equivalent of 8,750 plastic straws or 250 cups.
Gareth Williams, director of Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, said: “We are fully behind the AIF ‘Take Your Tent Home’ campaign. We want to see a really significant reduction in the single use of plastic tents.”
Mr Williams said that last year’s Drastic On Plastic initiative had been a great success at Cropredy. “We saw a dramatic reduction of plastic waste at our festival,” he said. By issuing free stainless steel water bottles to crew and artists we cut plastic bottles from over 4,500 to under a hundred. Our real ale bar also replaced 160,000 plastic glasses with a fully compostable alternative and didn’t issue plastic straws. We made similar progress in our backstage catering operation.”
An AIF report, published in 2018, revealed that 9.7% of people attending its member events had ditched a tent during that year’s festival season, equating to an estimated 875 tonnes of plastic waste.
AIF chief Paul Reed said: “We call upon major retailers to stop marketing and selling tents as single-use. AIF launches this campaign to raise awareness of abandoned tents as part of the single-use plastics problem. Festival audiences can reduce their carbon footprint simply by taking their tent home and reusing it.”
Ynot festival this year will refund you a tenner from your ticket price when you return a full bag of rubbish to the allocated area. Nice idea and hopefully it will help.
I've scavenged plenty of stuff from festivals in the past, loads of beers, wellies and even a diesel t shirt, still use one quecha pop up tent to this day for beach days, it will come to Cornwall again this year.
Quite amusingly we were camping last weekend and I took 3 chairs for the 4 of us, "where's my chair" asked dear daughter? Answered by me with a "probably in the field where you left it at ynot last year," she'll not do it again 🤣
Greenman festival has those single use cups, and generally, as people packed up they took all their shit with them.
They should ban those pop up tents. They are a bastard to get back in the packet.
Cretin
Agreed.
Just ban tents and sleeping bags.
Insist on all festival goers staying up all night every night, that's how they seemed to work 25 years ago.
Festivals goers are far too soft these days.
Yep, if kids today spent their money on decent quality class As, they wouldn't need to take shit tents😁
Cretin
Agreed.
All the more so since I dismally failed to post the post after the post I was referring to.
Post post posting petulance.
There’s no excuse for leaving your shit behind for someone else to clear up.
What? You’re too tired because you were off your head for 5 days to pack your crap out? You’re too hungover from drinking cheap piss?
Here’s a thought for you - show some fing restraint & some personal responsibility & carry your crap home! There’s no excuse for leaving your rubbish for someone else to pick up - I don’t give a F how expensive your ticket was......it doesn’t entitle you to be a selfish cock.
#1struleoflife
Do young people actually go to these crappy festival things then?
Astonishing as it may seem, yeah. Still, keeps ‘em off the streets for a few days! 😬
Campsites are different, they aren’t set up to be specifically for the purpose of people going on a bender, festivals are.. They aren’t the same thing.
As for burning stuff, I’m hardly doing it on an industrial scale, so why not… I don’t see the moral conundrum that you seem to see there.
Clearly.
Well if people can't be arsed taking their rubbish home off the hill it's hardly surprising they don't have the energy to remove all their crap at a festival.
It's a general society littering thing. I find it amazing amongst some people I know, colleagues and neighbours just how there's an assumption that it will all be cleaned up after them, and they can't see what the problem is. Culture of convenience is a large part of it.
Take charging for bags at supermarkets and lifetime bags. Should cut down on the bag waste? Nope. Local supermarket and almost everyone is picking up a "bag for life" each time they go, not reusing bags. Then I've seen people throw those bags in the bin and they just pay for another. 5 or 10p for convenience rather than carry a reusable about. Likewise all the plastic packaging on products, not seeing a problem with plastic wrapping on loose veg, and despite some wrappers stating the bag can be recycled (with a bit of effort as they aren't collected with normal recycling), in the bin or goes with an attitude of **** it.
Take charging for bags at supermarkets and lifetime bags. Should cut down on the bag waste?
Yes. Plastic bag sales in England have dropped 86% since the introduction of the charge and plastic bag marine litter has halved in the same time.
Insist on all festival goers staying up all night every night, that’s how they seemed to work 25 years ago.
🙂
Identify miscreants.
Offer them a choice of carrying their stuff out, being burnt in a big Wicker Man or lucky dip from the confiscated acid bag.
Kids today eh?
Clearly.
Do tell, what's the conundrum?
There’s no excuse for leaving your rubbish for someone else to pick up – I don’t give a F how expensive your ticket was……it doesn’t entitle you to be a selfish cock.
+1
You've spent all weekend having fun and now you're too tired? F*** off.
Plastic bag sales in England have dropped 86% since the introduction of the charge
Odd that I rarely see people take their own bag into a supermarket, especially the small ones. Always grabbing a fresh bag at the self scan, and at a person checkout a bag is generally asked for. They're often surprised when I present my own bag.
Maybe it's just where I live or the times I go.
Again though, I've seen plenty of the reusable chucked away, even littered.
But If they take it home and put it in a bin there it all still ends up in landfill.
This.
The photo is deliberately framed to make it look like a vast sea of waste to get everyone hot under the collar.
This.
I’m a great advocate of leave no trace. in the context of a fenced of festival, it doesn’t apply though.
This.
There’s no excuse for leaving your shit behind for someone else to clear up.
Every Tuesday night I leave my * out for someone else to clear up. I pay for it with my rates. In the same way festival goers pay for the clearup of their * out of their entry fee.
Maybe it’s just where I live or the times I go.
I think this is maybe an issue. I read an article about reusable bag adoption that basically said that adoption of money saving (and environmentally conscious) best practice in terms of reuse was far higher in leafy suburbs than lower socio economic areas and also that some shops and some areas have more planned shopping trips whilst others (they highlighted metropolitan areas where a lot of folk do multiple impulse weekly shops in 7-11 type stores on their way home from work on foot have not. In planned shopping areas bag reuse is far higher.
It's a mute point however - reusable bags are a false dawn. It takes 140 odd reuses of a bag for life before it breaks even over modern biodegradable carrier bags. Very few bags for life make it to the magic number.
Every Tuesday night I leave my * out for someone else to clear up. I pay for it with my rates. In the same way festival goers pay for the clearup of their * out of their entry fee.
Do you liberally discard it on the road in front of your house or do you perchance place it in some sort of handy bin on wheels?
I do wonder if the people that excuse this behaviour as 'well they've paid for it so why shouldn't they?' are also the people that think it's ok to decorate their area of the cinema with popcorn and discarded wrappers. After all the cinema pays for cleaners so it's in your rights. Or walk out of hotel rooms having left your very own interpretation of Tracey Emin's bed as a calling card- you paid for a room so you have every right no?
I think this maybe an issue. I read an article about reusable bag adoption that basically said that adoption of money saving (and environmentally conscious) best practice in terms of reuse was far higher in leafy suburbs than lower socio economic areas and also that some shops and some area have more planned shopping trips whilst others (they highlighted metropolitan areas where a lot of folk do multiple impulse weekly shops in 7-11 type stores on their way home from work on foot have not.
I use only reusable bags but according to The Infinite Monkey Cage the break even point is at 150 uses and I don't think they get that many uses before they get torn or lost. Plus the wife buys new reusables whenever she forgets bags so we must have bought dozens of them which go straight to landfill because there's only so many bags you can store. Plus we have to buy bin liners now, when before we used carrier bags. So in terms of conserving the planets resources I'm unconvinced. In terms of litter reduction they're brilliant.
Do you liberally discard it on the road in front of your house or do you perchance place it in some sort of handy bin on wheels?
Bin on wheels. That's the agreed system. At Glasto, within the fences, it seems they pay staff to clear stuff up wherever it goes.
I do wonder if the people that excuse this behaviour as ‘well they’ve paid for it so why shouldn’t they?’ are also the people that think it’s ok to decorate their area of the cinema with popcorn and discarded wrappers. After all the cinema pays for cleaners so it’s in your rights. Or walk out of hotel rooms having left your very own interpretation of Tracey Emin’s bed as a calling card- you paid for a room so you have every right no?
That's my point. If someone litters in a Cinema it will get collected by staff paid to collect it. Dumping litter in a contained area where it's expected and staff are immediately available to clear up just isn't the same as dumping litter elsewhere where it will remain for years. Unless I'm mistaken part of running a festival/cinema is clearing up after people, it's literally part of the service.
That's not to say it's a good thing, clearly if everyone disposed of their rubbish properly Cinemas/Festivals could reduce staff and reduced staff which might be good for the environment. (Would it though? Or would that saved cash just be spent somewhere else in the economy which would also be bad for the environment?)
The photo is deliberately framed to make it look like a vast sea of waste to get everyone hot under the collar.
This.
As I have said previously living next to Boomtown you can see the site from the road. That photo barely does it justice. Yes, in a couple of weeks it is immaculate (I think the site is being used for a toughmudder this weekend). Tbh it's not the littering that I find worse but the waste and consumerism of walking away from perfectly serviceable tents and camping chairs etc because they can't be arsed to carry them back to their cars. Something is very ****ed up in our society when we have that attitude.
Still, at least the stuff gets collected and redistributed overseas so it isn’t exactly going into landfill –
I take it you didn't read the linked article? That mistaken belief is one of the major issues - people think it's fine to leave because it gets reused. it doesn't
My first Glasto was 91 and I didn't come round on the Monday until mid afternoon by which point my mate had managed to drive his car up next to the tent (in the top part of the Pyramid field, in front of the farm). It was smaller and less secure then!. There was very little stuff being left behind.
5 or 6 years ago we were there until Monday night and the amount of stuff left was staggering. We were waiting for others to sleep off Sunday night and spent the day scavenging. Good chairs, Croc Wellies, a fair bit of food - we took as much as we could carry along with our own stuff). There were guys going round scavenging beer and there was enough they were leaving the cooking lager behind (there were also people filling tents with camping gas and throwing on a match for that proper mad max feel. Every so often there woudl be a muffled 'boof'). It had been a really wet year and muddy stuff means peopel dump more (we got out of the car park quickly but others near us had been stuck there all day).
it's partly attitude but it's a lot to do with cheap disposable chinese consumer junk. Tents and all the camping kit are massively cheaper in real terms than they were in 1990. It's tough to even buy good ones - when we were looking to replace our old North Face tent the new version was basically the same price as we'd paid 15 years+ earlier but was worse quality. (Yes a few exceptions - we eBayed a Hilleberg for more than we'd paid for it 10 years before....)
The stance of the festival organisers is rubbish (ahem). They just don't want the cost of landfill falling to themselves and want to externalise it to local authorities (wherever the removed crap is eventually dumped en-route home).
waste and consumerism of walking away from perfectly serviceable tents and camping chairs etc because they can’t be arsed to carry them back to their cars
Well yeah, single use of anything is a crime, but if you need a tent once in the blue moon and you have no where to store it the only other option is to give it away to someone who will use it, and it sounds like supply of tents is way higher than demand just after festivals.
Compared to flying a load of bands to the UK I suspect the waste binned tents is trivial. Possibly also compared to the environmental costs of doing an alternative activity to Glasto because you don't want to buy a tent for one use.
My guess is the other main reason tents are abandoned is people are just to ill/wasted to pack them up, and I'm really not sure how you address that.
I think part of the problem is the single use type festival kit that is sold in supermarkets and the like. You can pick up a 'tent', sleeping bad & matt for under £20! You spend more than that in a day on food, let alone drinks. It's a throw away society driven by price and quality.
Having spent £400 to go to a festival for a weekend they just want to get home, shower & sleep. They don't care about £20 worth of kit that stinks is damp and has already started to rip.
I remember being out on the bike on Scout Moor one day about 12-15 years ago and coming across an open tent containing an airbed and a sleeping bag and other detritus, hidden in a dip near the quarry. I was actually quite concerned and wondered if somebody had got lost or come to a nasty end in the quarry then decided it was probably somebody who had been having some kind of personal crisis and had wandered off home leaving everything behind. Soon afterwards we drove past the site of a festival near Staveley and saw the abandoned tents and I realised that what I had seen was the future.
It’s always been the same. I worked Womad and Reading in the mid 90’s stage building. We’d have a good old scavenge at the end and get a new wardrobe for the year. I should image more gets thrown away now as middle agers go to festivals a lot more and have bigger £ to spend on consumables. Last big festival was Green Man for me. God it was dull bar about 3 bands.
“My guess is the other main reason tents are abandoned is people are just to ill/wasted to pack them up, and I’m really not sure how you address that.”
I do.
Don’t get in such a state that you can’t carry your shit home with you.
Fing simples!
Don’t get in such a state that you can’t carry your shit home with you.
We're talking about other people's ****, not ours.
Don’t get in such a state that you can’t carry your shit home with you.
No need. There are toilets at most festivals, you know. Usually, the organisers clear them up at some point.
I find it hard to reconcile this being the same youthful generation pushing the agenda with Extinction Rebellion and the school strikes.
If young people are 18-30 (because that means I'm just "young") that's about 9 million people in the UK. Some were born in the 80's, some in this century.
I don't necessarily have anything in common with somebody 10 years younger than me from the other side of the country (although I might).
This reminds me of being accosted at a bar by a red faced old duffer who told me all young people love Corbyn and wanted me to explain why he as so great. He didn't accept my answer that I liked Milliband and voted for him, but thought Corbyn was an idiot that would be unelectable as PM. Just repeated the statement about all young people liking him
Do tell, what’s the conundrum?
Are you that dim-witted you need me to explain what you should be perfectly capable of understanding all by yourself?
It’s not worth my time.
😆
seosamh77 sorry it took me a while to respond but thanks for addressing the few questions I had.
I am on board with your 'leave no trace' ethos. As is Glastonbury Festival and host. Did you read the small print?
https://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/information/green-glastonbury/take-it-dont-leave-it/
For a few days in June, the farmland which plays host to Glastonbury Festival is transformed into a fully-functioning, makeshift city. The scale of the Festival is so vast that it is easy to forget that, for the rest of the year, these pastures, streams and woodlands are home to roaming herds of cows and thriving local wildlife.
For Glastonbury Festival to be sustainable, we all have a duty to make sure the land on which it stands is looked after. With over 200,000 people visiting and working across this sprawling site, reducing the impact Glastonbury Festival has on its general environment is a huge task. And it is one which we are fiercely devoted to.
But we simply can’t do it without you. There are many ways in which you can help us to protect our environment and the future of the Festival.
Please use the toilets provided. Urinating on the land or in the rivers contaminates the local water supply, killing wildlife and seriously compromises the future of the festival.
Please use our recycling bins. It is not okay to drop litter on the ground. Help us by placing your waste into the correct recycling bins.
Please only use what you need. If every Festival-goer used four napkins instead of one, there would be an extra 450,000 napkins wasted unnecessarily.
Take your tent and equipment home with you. Nothing should be considered disposable so please only bring equipment that is built to last.
Please use public transport, cycle or car-share to Glastonbury Festival. Car exhaust is still the greatest contributor to global climate change. Join the 40 percent of Festival-goers that travel to the Festival by public transport and help to reduce our carbon footprint.
Please bring a reusable water bottle. These can be filled for free at all of our taps and WaterAid kiosks across the Festival site.
Please use water responsibly. Turn off taps and help us use water efficiently.
Please do not bring in glass bottles or other prohibited items such as paper lanterns. They cause fires and harm the cattle that live on the land.BEYOND THE FARM
Our commitment to protect our environment – to use its resources responsibly and to reduce our ecological footprint – also extends beyond the physical boundaries of the Festival. Over the last few decades, we’ve donated millions of pounds to our partners at Greenpeace, Oxfam and WaterAid, who all do invaluable work to meet the urgent needs of our planet. Those donations wouldn’t be possible without all of you who buy our tickets, and the support of the thousands of volunteers who give their time to these good causes at the Festival.Please take a moment to read through our energy, waste and ecological policies and learn how we are working towards a more sustainable future, and the vital role you can play in helping us to achieve that.
Love the Farm, leave no trace.
thisisnotaspoon
Member
BBC News – The Malvern rave that ended all raves
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-40001484
I was at Castlemorton. Jesus, what a bank holiday weekend that was. I did however take all of my rubbish home with me.
