attendees of UK reading festival leave behind 60,000 tents and camping gear worth 1M

[Demovictory9]

Sea of '60,000 unwanted tents and camping gear' worth £1million is left at Reading Festival after three-day weekend... leaving staff with HUGE clean-up job

More than 60,000 one and two-man tents have been left behind by revellers at Reading Festival in Berkshire
Gazebos, inflatable mattresses and piles of litter were also left strewn around the Thameside campsite
Organisers say the majority of tents will have to be dumped as rubbish instead of given to a charitable cause


After the field has been emptied of them they are sorted by the Festival Waste Reclamation and Distribution charity who recycle them to give to the homeless and refugee groups.

But organisers, who have to fund the clear-up costs from ticket sales, said in a message on their website that most of the items removed from the site would be put into landfull rubbish dumps rather than be given to a good cause.

More than 100,000 people attended the three-day event with tickets costing up to £250 each.











https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6105311/Tents-left-abandoned-Reading-Festival-Bank-Holiday-weekend.html

[BigmanPigman]

1. That looks worse than the Woodstock 1969 mess left behind.

Woohoo....no pollution hypocrites.

[Demovictory9]

3. it's astonishing. plan for next year... ask them to roll up the tents, have big bins nearby for

deposit of tents. give to charity.

[Jim__]

2. Ah, a music festival at Reading.

After reading your thread title, I was disappointed to think that readers would leave behind such a mess.

[Demovictory9]

4. lol... it was confusing to me also.

[NJCher]

5. I, too

I said people who read don’t behave like this.

I also couldn’t understand why everyone would get together and stay in tents to read.

Otoh, it did dawn on me fairly quickly that Reading was a place. Hah, funny. Joke’s on me.

[captain queeg]

6. Looks like Portland over by Delta Park

Actually they just cleaned most of them, but give them a couple months and they’ll be back. I’m astonished how much crap builds up are those camps.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Up to 90% of the tents end up in landfill

Despite some festivals advertising that leftover tents will always go to charity, up to 90 per cent of tents that get left end up in landfill or the incinerator, said Matt Wedge, director of Festival Waste Reclamation & Distribution.

“A lot of the tents are very cheap supermarket tents marketed as ‘festival tents’, which as far as I can tell just means ‘disposable tent’,” he previously told The Independent.

“People can’t really be bothered to take their tent away with them on the Monday morning when they’re hungover and tired and since they have very little financial incentive to do so they don’t bother.”

Additionally, research carried out in 2013 by Teresa Moore, director at A Greener Festival, reveals that 60 per cent of tents get left behind because they are broken, which poses a number of environmental issues given that they are typically made from synthetic fabrics.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/sustainable-living/reading-festival-tents-left-behind-climate-b1912462.html

There's a good case for a "disposal fee" to be included in the price of any tent. Those who buy them with the intention of using them time after time won't see much of a difference in price, but those louts who just leave it for someone else to clear up, and do it again the next year, will pay for it. And it would encourage the quality to be better, so they don't break so easily.

[sir pball]

9. Just add a deposit to the ticket.

£25 or so that you get back on your way out if you can show your tent.

[Demovictory9]

11. Never heard of disposable tents

they they do look cheap

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Argos, a typical UK site (owned by a supermarket now) has 'festival tents' from 20 pounds

for a 2 person tent. So they're not leaving much behind, monetarily.

[chowder66]

8. That is disappointing. If they can drag it there they should drag it back.

[Delphinus]

10. Oh my ...

For some reason I expected better.