The festival organiser says his team is looking for partners to enable the initiative to be rolled out more widely : “ It ’ s not an easy thing to do , it ’ s quite a complex thing when we are already doing something complex - running music festivals , but if any other festival operators are interested in helping us to tackle this then that would be great .”
Interestingly , Smith says the problem doesn ’ t exist at his company ’ s other festival , bluedot ( 21,000 ).
“ It ’ s heart-breaking to leave bluedot where it looks like nobody ’ s ever been there and then a week later leave Kendal Calling where , in certain fields , it looks like nobody has left ,” he says .
While the blame could easily be laid with younger festivalgoers and a generation of attendees who perhaps are going to festivals for the first time , Badiali says it ’ s important to not simply demonise young people .
“ It ’ s interesting when you look at the different festivals and their audience breakdowns , I don ’ t think this is purely an issue that comes from the first time and young festival goers , some of the older generations of festival goers are as guilty of leaving their tents behind . When someone leaves a tent behind it causes a weird social effect – if you see someone else doing it , it becomes more normal .”
Claire O ’ Neill , co-founder of the A Greener Festival sustainable festival certification scheme and organiser of the Green Events & Innovations Conference ( GEI ), was one of the founder members of the Campsite Roundtable . In 2018 , the annual campsite aftermath all over Europe led 36 festival organisers , and six festival industry associations and sustainability groups from 10 countries , to get together at Eurosonic Noorderslag ( ESNS ) in Holland to find ways to tackle the issue . The initiative continues to be led by A Greener Festival and GO Group – the green operation division of the European festival association , Yourope .
The group convenes at key festival industry events throughout the year including ESNS , GEI ( UK ) and Reeperbahn ( Germany ). It is open to all festival organisers .
Among the resulting international initiatives have been Love Your Tent , which as well as campaigning for behavioural change and a more considerate approach by campers , offers Love Your Tent zones at events including the Isle of Wight Festival .
Attendees reserve a pitch for their tent in a dedicated field . They must commit to taking their tent and all belongings home after the festival , and pay a £ 30 deposit . While not a festival-wide scheme such as the one suggested by Smith , it has proven to have a positive impact at the events it is involved in .
O ’ Neill says pre-pitch camping services are also a great solution if there ’ s a service in place to clean , pack and reuse the tents again : “ I ’ m not talking about boutique camping , just having a standard tent provided . That also reduces how much stuff you ’ re carrying to the site and that makes the argument for travelling by public transport easier . There are some organisations that do this really well , such as Pitched For You and Camplight , which give the tents and waste camping equipment a second lease of life .”
She also highlights a company called
“ It ’ s heart-breaking to leave bluedot , where it looks like nobody ’ s ever been there , and then a week later leave Kendal Calling , where in certain fields it looks like nobody has left ”
From The Fields co-founder Andy Smith
Circular Camping , which runs a reclaimed camping equipment shop at events including the Lost Village Festival , which as well as selling used equipment carries out camping kit repairs . It also has an eBay shop where abandoned equipment is sold on .
While these initiatives are chipping away at the mountain of waste left at the hundreds of festivals each year , O ’ Neill says it ’ s important not to give people the impression that if they leave items behind they will be collected and reused .
“ The scale of resource required by festival teams to deal with it is huge when their time is limited as they have to get packed up and out of the campsite . That means that generally you can only just scratch the surface , especially when coupled with the problem of poor quality equipment , and that many of the tents will be broken ,” she says .
With behavioural change being the key goal , O ’ Neill says the Campsite Roundtable is very much an ongoing initiative where European festival organisers talk about what kind of solutions they are working on and how the sector can best communicate to audiences and change things .
“ We realised that it needed to be a joint approach because we were all suffering with the same enormous problem .”
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