Hate the farm, leave all your shit behind

[KaleidoscopeEyes]

I was ruined, but managed to take three tents down and carry them out (one was tatted)

but hey, you left it up against an ice cream van and that must make your selfish wasteful attitude ok then, eh?

[knivesout]

irritated with my mate for leaving our tent. in hindsight i probably should have just packed it up and carried it myself, though coupled with the heavy bag and the comedown that seemed far too daunting a task :/

still, it just irritates me. this man, michael eavis, has the genuine kindness to let out his fully operational (and beautiful) farm so that hundreds of thousands of people a year can have some of the greatest experiences of their lives. at least show the man some respect buy not turning the land which has been the basis of his root livelihood for decades into a tip. think of the cows, people!

[TwistedReligion]

I left my tent behind. I felt bad but I was ruined over the weekend

[TwistedReligion]

this man, michael eavis, has the genuine kindness to let out his fully operational (and beautiful) farm so that hundreds of thousands of people a year can have some of the greatest experiences of their lives. at least show the man some respect buy not turning the land which has been the basis of his root livelihood for decades into a tip. think of the cows, people!

[binbag77]

I was pretty shocked when i looked at the webcam too. There was 6 of us in our party and all we left was a bag of recylcling and and bin bag of rubbish - the area where we camped was spotless.

I also saw alot of people around the stages just getting up and leaving cups/cans etc etc. I did not drop one thing all weekend. It isnt hard to put stuff in the bins. Grrrr

[purplecakes]

A lot of people are suggesting the problem lies somewhat with the younger people at the festival, but didn't ME say a couple of years ago that he wanted to attract the younger, "NME and Radio 1 crowd" back. Maybe this is the side effect of doing so.

[Redwinevino]

I personally think they need to be less "zany" with some of the videos that they play between the bands about water aid etc and just give facts

[alfoir]

I seem to remember last year in between acts on the Pyramid they showed a Leave No Trace video? It had Emily Eavis and a few celebs in it? Didn't see any of that this year.

I'm sure they could re-use the old video in future years (if it existed and this isn't me imagining it) or make a new one at little to no cost. I'm sure there would be plenty of amateur film makers out there that would more than happily do it for nothing. Quick 2 minute snappy video showing the working farm and what damage littering and urinating can do using archive footage/photos from previous years, then a few celebs just saying "Love the Farm, Leave No Trace" - you'd easily get Chris Martin, Lily Allen, etc saying that to a camera for free. Show it twice 15 minutes apart in between acts on stages with video screens and maybe just the audio on other stages.

Even if it made a difference to 5% of people that litter and leave tents behind, it's better than nothing.

[izcuje]

this year being my first, I was amazed at how casually everyone was throwing their cans on the ground around the stages.

after the chem brothers' on saturday a whole row of blokes were urinating on the wall on one side of the stage like it was a nice big open-air urinal and the next day on sunday a bunch of people were sitting down and leaning against the same wall shading from the sun.

[wolfticket]

I dropped a paper cup in front of the Pyramid on Sunday. The only thing I dropped all weekend, and I still feel a bit bad about it. It was yoghurt-y, I didn't want to put it in my pocket and I didn't have anywhere else to put it. I convinced myself that it was a drop in the ocean, as I think many people do.

Anyway, confessions out of the way,

a bit of Douglas Adams for you:

Like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet, Bethsellamin, is now so worried about the cumulative erosion caused by ten million visiting tourists a year, that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet, is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave. So every time you go to the lavatory there, it’s vitally important to get a receipt.

[simonmcqueen]

No, no, no, no, no....why make it even easier for people to chuck stuff away? The problem is people throwing away perfectly good stuff...tents, chairs etc...why make it even earier for them to be wasteful?

[sarah j]

Pyramid stage, post apocolypse (midday monday)

Edited June 30, 2011 by sarah j

[abdoujaparov]

You're half right. The problem is people throwing away 'stuff', period. The festival, by which I mean the bill payers of Festival Republic or GFL, have to pay landfill charges for anything they don't recycle. They largely don't care less if you've put it tidily in a bin bag, in a bin or skip, or left it strewn all over your camp site. Leaving it anywhere on site at all is the problem.

If you want to go to extremes and feel the warm glow of doing the absolute best thing for the festival then don't bring any of your own food and drink - the plates and cups from the traders are all compostable so don't generate any landfill, unlike the packaging of anything you bring yourself. This is why cups and plates all over in front of the Pyramid Stage are largely neither here nor there in the scheme of things and there's no impetus for more bins.

If you absolutely have to abandon your tents or whatever then sticking a couple of bin bags of wellies from the car park into your car and taking them home for your bin man is probably better for the festival overall than any amount of tidying and bagging of rubbish on your campsite.

For my money the solution is to return to the pre-trolley ethos of the 90s and before. I still camp at the festival as half of two people in a single 'three man' tent & go onto site with no more stuff than I can fit in a rucksack. Always take it all off again & this time I went off with an additional salvaged tent, tarpaulin, and a dozen or so extra tent pegs. I'd have brought more off I hadn't been pushed for time.

[LusciousLucy]

I felt bloody awful for leaving a litre of diet lemonade and a bottle of soda water!

I took home with me more than I brought though including a lovely new Vango tent. Pushing 60 kilos UP the Hill of Death on a trolley and on my back considering I arrived via Gate D was a bit of a shock and fairly painful but I made it in less than 2 hours and Stab was very patient with me.

CT was left in a fairly tidy state compared to the rest of Pennards.

[FestivalFriend]

i agree something needs to be done.

I'm in a group of lads, all mid 20's and we go to 2-4 large festivals a year and the general feeling among the group is buy cheap stuff and leave it behind. that seems to be the trend at the moment.

me personally I don't buy cheap camping shit that falls apart, all my stuff is expensive and it comes back every time and is looked after. and in the end, i spend the least money on camping gear because, but have the best stuff. why can't people get their heads round this!

I blame the supermarkets for selling camping gear so cheap that it has now become disposable.

[scorp]

10,000 tents left behind in '07.

[scorp]

And: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qeBm-0Sea0&feature=related

[geebus]

Or go back a bit more and let people camp between their cars (yea right), so that they can much more easily take camping stuff as well as rubbish home. One way I presume the festival has changed over the years is that now we have the longest walks ever to and from vehicles for decent camping areas.

[nicktrow]

This needs to be done more. I am losing faith with Green Police whenever I saw them all they were doing was singing. 2013 I am starting my own operation

[KirstyJ]

i saw a girl having a poo! by the silent rave on saturday night/sunday morning. i was horrified as i thought the toilets were mainly clean and not too smelly! i was truly disgusted

[Louisa1969]

Appalling. It would never enter my head to leave all my stuff behind, I don't have money to burn like that. We were camping next to some 18 yr old students who kept telling us how they couldn't afford to be there then they left EVERYTHING: tents, air beds, wellies, chairs, gazebos etc.... my mum would have killed me if I'd done something like that at their age! So I took a couple of chairs and will now be comfy at Latitude in a couple of weeks! Wish I'd driven down- I would have taken one of those massive tents that must cost £300 each. How do people have so much money that they can leave it in a field in Somerset?!

The other issue, of course, is the attitude- 'oh yeah, someone else will sort out my mess for me, I don't have to do it'. This makes me angry beyond belief. How selfish. How arrogant. How plain ignorant. Grrrr. My mates and I were discussing it on the way home, thought maybe they could introduce some sort of deposit system- if you go in with a tent etc you pay a £20 deposit and, if you walk out again with your tent, you get the £20 back.... or something. Prob wouldn't work but... sigh. That last walk up to the coaches at 2pm on Monday really made me sad.

[steveyt]

I'd wake up with brothers cider cups in my pocket. The misses found it amusing but I hate litter louts.

Two groups near us left their massive tents, probably worth about 300 pound each. Couldn't believe it

[pinback]

I'd like to bring up other festivals as a reason for this behaviour, don't know if this has been mentioned yet:

I've been to Creamfields a few times as a punter and a DJ, and even years ago there seemed to be this attitude that the floor was a bin. I was able to have a stroll around the site one year before they opened the gates and it was immaculate with beautiful green fields. Poked my head out from backstage a few hours later and it was like a f**king landfill site. The 18-hour dance festivals are just horrible for this - everything just goes on the floor. I see a lot of this disposable attitude being carried into festivals like Glasto were people don't seem to consider that they are going to be there tomorrow...and the next day...and the next...etc.

[geebus]

I suspect that for a lot of places it doesn't cost much more to do a litter sweep that picks up a small or large amount of rubbish.

In fact, wouldn't be surprised if this ended up cheaper overall having lots of bins and trying to get people to use them (ie consider logistics of rubbish clearing while people are around, etc).

In the end, the question is 'does it matter' when rubbish is cleared.

I get the feeling (as I may have said earlier in this thread) that it's more a case of latching on to something for the sake of it, than actually making much of a real difference for the festival.

[windy_miller]

Its amazing how much they have cleared up if you look at the webcam now