Tent walkabout post festival

[Curlygirl]

Jeez, one of those tents was this seasons kalahari 10. I have one and it costs £500. Who has £500 to throw away?! That video makes me sad 

[Jugtanion]

16 minutes ago, ian the worm said:

Is this Wednesday afternoon?!

[RobertProsineckisLighter]

Out of interest where do you go to leave tents you want to leave? We took ours home and did leave a few cans found during the clean up with the campsite crew and asked them to find a good home for them. 

[NoBallGames]

7 minutes ago, H.M.V said:

This was the first year I ever even contemplated leaving anything due to exhaustion. However we still packed everything up even though tent wouldnt fit properly into tent bag and sucked it up and carried back to the coach and hotel. Repacked when we got to the hotel so we could carry it back on the flight to Ireland.  Bet most of those dirty c**ts were travelling by car. Really boils my piss cos I can't even take some extra home cos just can't fit in baggage for the plane. 

Oh man we were in this same boat. Everything weighed WAY more. So we had to go Leeds --> Dublin --> Chicago --> Colorado to get home. I'm at the airport repacking backpacks because gear weighed way more wet and muddy and they wanted to charge us 60 pounds due to the over weight. Ended up having to put my weight tent in a trash bag and then into my carry on to get the weight sorted. To think so many people simply have to take it to their car and home just is so sad 

 

If it takes 1000-1500 people cleaning up this mess at ~8 pounds in hour so on the low end 8,000 pounds in hour to clean up this stuff it would be great if there was a checkout system. Every camp site has stewards. Not sure how to practically implement it but it would be wonderful if you had to put a 100 pound deposit down and only if you got checked out do you get it back. Sure people will still hustle the system but might get it moving in a much better direction. Or make it non-monetary and if your registration number doesn't properly check out you can't go back to Glasto for 3 years. 

Edited June 29, 2016 by NoBallGames

[noplacelikehome]

Thanks for posting this I honestly hadn't realised it was this bad! As mentioned above some of those tents must be worth hundreds of pounds. Very very sad

[Migraine]

One of the big things that needs to happen is communication, people need to know that the tents aren't going to be wholesale recycled. On the way out I saw someone collecting tents for refugees and. I remarked that this was a great idea but sadly I was taking my tent home and it was a shame that people couldn't be bothered to take their tents down and drop them at the collection point. Someone next to me said that the scouts come along and take them down. They would not have it that it I stop large a task to take all the tents down and package them up in non existent tent bags.

Some people probably genuinely think that they are doing a good thing by leaving their tent behind for some charity to collect they need to understand this is not the case. That said it does not surprise me that most of the tents that were left were shit holes inside.

It's a shame that an ecobond or something similar would probably cost too much to implement, from the festivals position it is probably cheaper to landfill the left tents than it is to run a bond system.

Cheers for the video, I left at about 3ish and put the number of tents left down to people leaving it late.

[Mollyanne&Mike]

We knew because of the mud it would be hell transferring everything back to the car - especially as we ended up parking in Orange and traipsing to Big Ground where we'd arranged to meet others.

Our solution? Two round trips on Sunday morning, and a third when we left on Monday morning. Yes, it took about 6 hours in total, and about 18 miles walking, but we left in total one small bag of recycling rubbish in the correct area.

Everything else came home.

I wish there was some way of shaming these people, we say it every year, but no one has come up with a successful idea yet.

It is shocking that some people are so unaware of the value of things and consider everything to be disposable and simply replaced.

It makes me pretty embarrassed that anyone that knows I went to Glastonbury might consider me to be one of these horrendous people.

[Gommy]

Didn't realise it was quite this bad.  Even with the mud our tents were damp and a little muddy but could completely have got away without giving them a wipe down once home.  

With technology I'm sure there are options, but whether they are truly feasible particularly from a cost point of view may not be the case.  There must be ways to mark peoples tents with something tied to their ticket as they come in, but it's a case of time and money and then what do you do when they leave their tent? The admin to mark tents and then if left behind pursue them in some manner?

Some sort of half-voluntary/forced deposit system whereby you need to register your tent and then when you leave register it the opposite way to get your deposit back or probably a better incentive -> not get your registration black listed.

As drone technology and such improves, some way to have them map out the site and the people whose tents are whose... all a bit big brother but with facial recognition maybe it could be done.

All the solutions really become quite involved, particularly when you consider the implications of slowing down logistical issues (entry/exit) that are already not perfect.

If there are any suitable options it would be nice to see the festival trying some scale pilot schemes for small sections of campsites to see how these may work.

Forcing on-site camping stores to register the purchaser probably wouldn't be such a big deal I guess, but is probably a tiny part of the problem.

Which really in my mind means the best current options are through educating people...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

[RobertProsineckisLighter]

Pre erected tents for everyone is the answer I guess but it's a costly and I imagine unpopular one. 

[DTichborne]

I will wager that there's not one person that changed their mind as a result of the pledge when they bought the tickets, the signs around the site and the many films they showed. People are imbeciles. They might as well not bother asking each year. I wouldn't be annoyed with the organisers if they punished us all with a year off. 

[DeanoL]

15 minutes ago, Gommy said:

With technology I'm sure there are options, but whether they are truly feasible particularly from a cost point of view may not be the case.

That's the problem. Any solution needs to be cheaper than just paying someone to take the tent down and bin it. Hiring staff to mark and monitor tents and so on wouldn't be.

As much as it winds people on here up, it's not really a big problem for the festival. They've already solved it: they pay people to take them down. That money comes from your ticket price, or out of the headliner budget or whatever. The festival would rather you didn't leave them as it'd save them a lot of money, but it's certainly not a threat to the festival in the same way pissing in the streams is.

This year particularly while it might look like a huge problem, that's because you can see the tents. All the rubbish discarded around site and trampled down in to the mud, that needs to be picked, then the mud churned up and picked again, and so on... that's a far more time consuming and difficult jobs than packing down tents.

From a individual perspective - well yeah, it's not great for the environment. Leaving your tent instead of reusing it ups your carbon footprint. But then I don't like to judge on just one thing like that. It's a fraction of the carbon emissions of taking a flight, for example. Or having a kid. Let he who is without sin and all that... Those travelling on public transport and leaving their tents are probably still ahead ton for ton on those travelling by car that took their tents home.

[YetAnotherOldHippy]

I'm sure I'm not the only person willing to stay until Tuesday to help pack up abandoned tents - in exchange for a couple of meals and lift to Castle Cary station (and a potential tent upgrade looking at many of those).

If it's made known that you tie the tent bag to a guy rope on your tent if you're leaving it then the clean-up can start Monday morning.

Anyone else up for it next year?

[JanieM28]

5 minutes ago, YetAnotherOldHippy said:

I'm sure I'm not the only person willing to stay until Tuesday to help pack up abandoned tents - in exchange for a couple of meals and lift to Castle Cary station (and a potential tent upgrade looking at many of those).

If it's made known that you tie the tent bag to a guy rope on your tent if you're leaving it then the clean-up can start Monday morning.

Anyone else up for it next year?

That's not a bad idea - tie the tent bag to the guy rope and leave the tent behind intact. Without rubbish inside though!

[dexydexy]

That's crazy! Had no idea so many tents were left behind. 

Our tent was too big and super heavy because it has steel poles (what kind of idiot brings that to a festival?! Yeah, it'll be the last time! ) the walk back to the car nearly killed us and I'm sure there's a part of all of us that would've loved to just leave the lot! But we're decent people and care about the farm, the environment and the future of the festival. Crazy and just goes to show what a disposable attitude a lot of people have.

[DeanoL]

37 minutes ago, YetAnotherOldHippy said:

I'm sure I'm not the only person willing to stay until Tuesday to help pack up abandoned tents - in exchange for a couple of meals and lift to Castle Cary station (and a potential tent upgrade looking at many of those).

If it's made known that you tie the tent bag to a guy rope on your tent if you're leaving it then the clean-up can start Monday morning.

Anyone else up for it next year?

They pay people to do that. It's not a big expense compared to the rest of the festival. I'm sure you could apply for the job if you really wanted to do it.

[ollyrag]

And people ask "has the festival changed over the years" or "has it lost something" ?

I do not recognise Glastonbury Festival at all in the above video. 

Very sad indeed.

 

 

[scaryclaireyfairy]

I figured it would be a bad year for people leaving tents.  We were in family camping so it was hard to judge cos it looked like every last person there was actually leaving no trace.  Sadly, I was too knackered and focussed on getting my own stuff to the car to wander round the other fields and check out potential tent upgrades.

[Craigston]

Not really in the spirit of the festival but one way to reduce this could be the organisers issuing a warning that they will monitor who camps where and unless you abide by 'love the farm, leave no trace' ethos, your registration will be revoked for say, 5 years.

Of course, this wouldn't stop the 'do Glasto once to check the box' brigade who may make up a large proportion of the offenders, but the fear factor of a ban alone could have some effect on the post-fest state of the fields for very little cost. 

[jon10x]

They could have campsite marshals handing out tickets with codes on to people they see taking tents down which gives u access to a separate booking site for next years festival. Not guaranteeing u a ticket but giving u an advantage. 

[DeanoL]

1 minute ago, Craigston said:

Not really in the spirit of the festival but one way to reduce this could be the organisers issuing a warning that they will monitor who camps where and unless you abide by 'love the farm, leave no trace' ethos, your registration will be revoked for say, 5 years.

Of course, this wouldn't stop the 'do Glasto once to check the box' brigade who may make up a large proportion of the offenders, but the fear factor of a ban alone could have some effect on the post-fest state of the fields for very little cost. 

Or you could just register again.

[Jsmooth]

I really don't get how people leave valuable stuff behind and secondly if your not keeping it packing it up roughly for rubbish collection isn't  a 10 min job either, invite me back i'll pack them up 50% for me 50% for charity.

[Craigston]

4 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Or you could just register again.

True. The registration process would clearly need updating to prevent this. 

[tvrobbie]

Simple option would be the gates just take an additional £50 tent deposit when punters enter the site and get wristbands. In exchange for £50, you get a ticket you have to return when you exit the site. If you or your party don't leave with a tent, you don't get your £50 back. If your tent is genuinely damaged/binned, just show a photo of it in the refuse collection.

[joy114]

12 hours ago, Curlygirl said:

Jeez, one of those tents was this seasons kalahari 10. I have one and it costs £500. Who has £500 to throw away?! That video makes me sad 

This is what I don't understand, if you are prepared to leave behind a £500 tent why don't you just camp offsite.  Surely the "stigma" of doing that is lesser than dumping your tent?

[warriormonk]

I camped here up by the fence and had to walk through all this whilst carrying all my possessions back to gate A.  It's always a very depressing feeling that so many people hold the farm in such contempt.  It was far worse this year and the mud probably played a part in people deciding to be pond life.   

The get-out needs to be supervised more closely.  I always get the feeling that the festival falls apart on Monday morning and marshalling seems to be non-existent...apart from at the gates. Camp site stewards have to remain on station, I think. Punters wishing to leave their tents should, at the very least, take them down, pack them away and leave them in a tent dump at the bottom of their field.  

Edited June 30, 2016 by warriormonk