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Glastonbury thanks the 99% of festival-goers who took their tents away with them
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 13 July 2022
Glastonbury’s Emily Eavis has thanked the vast majority of the festival’s attendees this year who took their tents away with them as they departed the site.
“Green, empty fields!” she tweeted, sharing a picture of, well, just that. “We’re delighted to let you know that 99% of tents were taken home again this year. Thank you to every person who packed up and left no trace. It’s an inspiring feat, a huge effort and one we appreciate so much. Thanks also to our amazing team of litter pickers”.
Discarded tents have become a significant issue for festivals over the years, of course, both in terms of having to clear them up and the environmental impact of all that non-recyclable camping equipment that largely ends up in landfill.
This is an issue across the festival industry, although Reading and Leeds have become the events that are generally made an example of each year, with aerial footage showing the scale of tents left behind when people go home.
A survey in 2014 saw 60% of people asked admitting that they simply discarded tents at the end of events. There have been various reasons given for why that happens.
There was a belief for a time that tents left behind at festivals would be collected by charities to take to refugee camps. However, while such charities do exist, they have said that they can only collect a small proportion of the tents that are left behind, not least because many tents are vandalised to the point of being unusable.
A more likely reason for the abandoned tents problem getting bigger is the growth in availability of super cheap camping equipment, which means tents are so affordable that they can be seen as disposable.
There have been many proposals on how to tackle the discarded tents issue in recent years, including adding a £25 ‘tent tax’ to ticket prices, refundable when people prove that they have taken their tent and other belongings away with them. However, in the case of Glastonbury, it seems that just asking has done the job.
Well, maybe more telling than asking. Repeated requests from festival chiefs to “leave no trace”, both in the run up to the event and on site – something which started with the 2019 edition of the festival – appear to have had good results.
And while a small proportion of people are still leaving belongings behind, it is a seemingly a much smaller number than at most other festivals. Whether this success can be replicated at other events – particularly Reading and Leeds – remains to be seen.
