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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsattendees of UK reading festival leave behind 60,000 tents and camping gear worth 1M
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 jobMore 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
(51,563 posts)Woohoo....no pollution hypocrites.
Demovictory9
(32,419 posts)deposit of tents. give to charity.
Jim__
(14,059 posts)After reading your thread title, I was disappointed to think that readers would leave behind such a mess.
Demovictory9
(32,419 posts)I said people who read dont behave like this.
I also couldnt 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. Jokes on me.
captain queeg
(10,085 posts)Actually they just cleaned most of them, but give them a couple months and theyll be back. Im astonished how much crap builds up are those camps.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,262 posts)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 cant really be bothered to take their tent away with them on the Monday morning when theyre hungover and tired and since they have very little financial incentive to do so they dont 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
(4,737 posts)£25 or so that you get back on your way out if you can show your tent.
Demovictory9
(32,419 posts)they they do look cheap
muriel_volestrangler
(101,262 posts)for a 2 person tent. So they're not leaving much behind, monetarily.
chowder66
(9,046 posts)Delphinus
(11,824 posts)For some reason I expected better.