Someone I follow on Twitter posted a link to this YouTube clip showing the Glastonbury aftermath. The amount of rubbish left behind is quite depressing but understandable. I assume many of those who go will assume that part of the large ticket price includes money to cover clearing the site afterwards. As the organisers employ staff to sort all the rubbish for recycling leaving it strewn across the site is, possibly, the 'best' course of action.

What I found more shocking though is the number of tents left behind. Tents can be a relatively large investment and so leaving them behind, treating them as a disposable item, seems unthinkable. But then it's obvious that the tents that have been left were not a large investment. They are cheap dome tents that come in 'festival packs' from the major supermarket chains and other retailers. After a weekend of use at Glastonbury are they useful for anything else? Perhaps not.

The video seems to blame the stores for selling such cheap tents and causing the problem. but then who in the their right mind takes an expensive good quality tent to Glastonbury? The likelihood of it getting damaged must be pretty high. I think if I were going I'd buy a cheap tent and leave it there too. So I think the organisers need to take responsibility for creating a market for cheap disposable tents which has been filled by the major retailers.

To be fair it seems (at least from one of the comments on YouTube) that they have dealt with it by collecting the tents up and donating them to the UN. The alternative is that the owners took them home and then to their local tip where they would get dumped in a landfill. So perhaps leaving your cheap disposable tent on site when you leave is the most environmentally friendly option.