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Topic: Abandoned tents - ARTICLE

fahlin

22/8/2010 at 9:10pm
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Interesting article from the Times I thought i would share:

"Every festival has its own approach to the clear-up that takes place when the last stragglers have left. Events run by Mean Fiddler this summer – which include the Reading and Leeds festivals as well as Glastonbury – have teamed up with a project called Give Me Shelter , which collects abandoned equipment to redistribute through humanitarian organisations.

Allegedly there were collection points this year at Glastonbury, where you could take everything from tents and camping mats to chairs and rucksacks. All I saw were thousands of tents abandoned in muddy fields. From here I am assured that they were collected by a team of Give Me Shelter volunteers and taken to a designated airing and cleaning area.

Unless you are sure that such a scheme is operating, it is much better to get in the habit of taking home what you pack. Tents may be easy to donate to charities, but stinking wellies and batteries are not.

Nor are muddy dresses. I overheard girls saying that they had bought cheap clothes from Primark to wear to Glastonbury so that they could shed them. Convenient maybe, but disposable festival fashion is not green.

When I spoke to the Glasto organiser Michael Eavis earlier this year, he admitted that he still had a pile of wellies from 2003.

Whether such a huge event as Glastonbury can be green at all is examined by next week’s Countryfile on BBC One (Sunday) a programme that is bound to be entertaining, if only for the opportunity to witness the state of your bedraggled columnist after three days of rainy camping."

Give Me Shelter

Fi

hunterxf382

22/8/2010 at 9:47pm
Location: Bilston West Midlands
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Watched the programme and did a bit of googling on the subject, which left a bitter taste after reading some of the stats.... Talk of over 15,000 tents left at just one event alone! That's the result of cheap disposable camping packs sold by the big chain supermarkets etc that aren't seen as worth the bother of bringing home. AND they overwhelmed the charities so much that most went to landfill. Logistics + costs of removal meant that just a few hundred ended up being recycled.

And that was just one out of scores of festivals around the country each year.....

What an utter waste of equipment.

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Pete B

Coleman Coastline 6 + extension and too many extras..lol

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fahlin

22/8/2010 at 10:09pm
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i was flabbergasted and it is shameful! supermarkets are probably also responsible for their cheap throwaway clothing and the empty bottles of booze they left behind too! they should pay to clean up.

doubledee

23/8/2010 at 9:13am
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Yup, it's about time that the supermarkets and big stores took resonsibility for the amount of waste they generate with packaging etc. and cheap, throwaway goods.

I know plenty of people that go to festivals that buy cheap tents beforehand off ebay or at these stores and leave them behind. Shameful really.

Proper campers leave the place as they found it and take everything behind. I often feel guilty about chucking all my rubbish in one bin at campsites as quite often they offer no recycling facilities, which is quite surprising.

AndyandLynda

23/8/2010 at 1:02pm
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Whats it got to do with where they bought the goods from?

The people who attend these festivals know they are paying a higher price for their tickets because it includes the cost of clearing up so they just leave it all behind.

They should be made to clear up after themselves,its disgusting how can they just walk away and leave it all.

Mind you it does give someone a job !!

Andy

Opensauce

23/8/2010 at 1:28pm
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Whether you take your rubbish home with you or leave it at the festival it still goes to landfill & it could be argued that the high cost of festival tickets should include waste disposal. Organizers asking punters to take their rubbish home because it is the 'green' thing to do when all they are doing is seeking to maximize profits are displaying utter hypocracy. Festy goers arn't 'proper' campers anyway & can't really be compared with those of us who go camping in the 'normal' way.

To say a festival like Glasto should be 'green' is laughable. The 'green' way forward is to not have the festival at all. Its carbon footprint must be huge. Festies like Glasto must make a huge profit. It is the organizer's responsibly(not the punters')to make sure the site is cleared afterwards in the most environmentally friendly way possible.

To blame the punters for leaving a mess when the whole ethos of festivals encourages excess alcohol/drug taking & provides only rudimentry toilet/washing facilities is hypocracy. How are folk supposed to worry about 'green issues' when they are tired, filthy & out of their brains after 3 days of non stop partying? The entire cost of disposing of their waste will be included in the £190 they have each paid for their tickets.

Discarded festival tents are of no use to humanitarian organizations ayway. Disaster relief requires strong canvas tents built for the job.

kittenshipman

23/8/2010 at 2:20pm
Location: Rotherham South Yorkshire
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Quote: Originally posted by fahlin on 22/8/2010
"Every festival has its own approach to the clear-up that takes place when the last stragglers have left. Events run by Mean Fiddler this summer – which include the Reading and Leeds festivals as well as Glastonbury – have teamed up with a project called Give Me Shelter , which collects abandoned equipment to redistribute through humanitarian organisations.

Allegedly there were collection points this year at Glastonbury, where you could take everything from tents and camping mats to chairs and rucksacks. All I saw were thousands of tents abandoned in muddy fields. From here I am assured that they were collected by a team of Give Me Shelter volunteers and taken to a designated airing and cleaning area."

That sounds good but I can't see it makes any actual difference. Leeds festival is probably the biggest, dirtiest, most wasteful festival I've ever been to. They've had collection points for unwanted gear for years and I can't see that it's made any difference - if anything it's worse now. The problem was you had to take complete, undamaged tents and equipment to these points and anyone who can be bothered to go to this trouble would surely take their gear home anyway. It sounds better that there are actually people going and 'rescuing' gear but you have to wonder how much of it is going to be worth saving, I bet most of it goes straight in the bin. Also, if you were doing that job, beware the perfectly pitched undamaged tent - my sister's repulsive friends at Download this year had a 2-man dome they used as a toilet tent but no toilet

I'm not sure what the festival organisers can do about it, it's people's attitudes at festivals that are the problem.

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Happiness is an empty field...

Merry

24/8/2010 at 10:18am
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Quote: Originally posted by Tentz on 23/8/2010

....Discarded festival tents are of no use to humanitarian organizations ayway. .....

That's my feeling too. A lot of tents load as 'festival tents' are straight-to-landfill £14.99 jobbies, and bought to be used once then binned. However much I might disagree with that approach, it equally makes no sense to try to salvage this sort of tat and ship it out to disaster areas.

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Tackling life the Western District way

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