Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

kwackers
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by kwackers »

horizon wrote:Camplight don't appear to say where they get their recycled tents from. But they certainly cannot take the thousands from Glastonbury. The main problem seems to be that the tents really are seen as single-use items and have little or no value once used. Quite how these festival-goers resolve that with their moral values I really don't know. Do they really care that little?

It's not just tents. Take the thread on the tea shop bemoaning how valueless bikes have become.

It seems counter intuitive but people have too much money these days. Sure they complain they don't but it's really only houses that make it so.
Remove the cost of housing and the amount of crap people are able to buy is astounding. And not everyone has a mortgage or large rent bills.

A £300 bike is almost impulse for a lot of folk whilst a cheap tent doesn't even register.
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by Vorpal »

Bmblbzzz wrote:The OP mentions "tent rescue". I don't know what the organisers of Glastonbury do with discarded tents, but clearly the rescued tents have to be rescued from somewhere.

Once upon a time, they were just thrown away. I think some of the folks who did the work of cleaning up, rescued some of the tents, but it was an unofficial / informal thing.
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by PH »

Vorpal wrote: I think some of the folks who did the work of cleaning up, rescued some of the tents, but it was an unofficial / informal thing.

I was one of those folk a couple of times in the 90's, various good finds, but hardly any abandoned tents. But then you couldn't buy a tent then for 4x hours minimum wage and the few that were rescued usually had some resale value.
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by Stradageek »

PH wrote:
Stradageek wrote: a pristine field ready for the cows to return despite housing 12,000+ people the day before. It can be done!

You are aware of the huge environmental damage cows cause aren't you?

LOL - nice one :D

And they still sell bacon and burgers at Greenbelt though vastly outgunned by sumptuous veggie options, the Tibetan chikpea curry is to die for
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by Bmblbzzz »

Festival tents weren't a thing back in the 90s. But then the festival tickets were still a price that teenagers could save up for on Saturday job money. Come to that, Glastonbury festival itself was still a bit counter-culture, post-hippy; I suppose that still exists in some smaller festivals but not big ones like Glastonbury.
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by horizon »

PH wrote:Yes, the photos of fields covered in rubbish is shocking, it's very visible, an easy target and easily avoided, but you're attacking what is a tiny part of the problem


You are right. I think why it gets home because it's tents (that's meaningful to me), it's heavily promoted in the media this week (the festival that is, not just the waste), it's plastic and because it's a huge disjuncture between the sea of waste and the sunshine, countryside and indeed ethos of enjoyment. It is very "in your face"!


mattheus wrote: You can take too extreme a view on these matter sometimes .


A fair point although I don't think it's extreme to get angry about our shared home being so utterly, visibly and thoughtlessly trashed and then have it shoved in our face all week by the media as to how wonderful it all is. But I think some small initiatives to solve the problem would certainly get my support and dissipate what is after all just the rage of powerless frustration. Maybe we can revisit this thread in two to three years and be very pleased with what might have changed. I hope so. :)
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by Sweep »

mattheus wrote:
horizon wrote:The main problem seems to be that the tents really are seen as single-use items and have little or no value once used. Quite how these festival-goers resolve that with their moral values I really don't know. Do they really care that little?


We don't know what they are thinking. There was a study on this earlier in the year - quite a few festival customers did assume that their abandoned tent would be re-used/repurposed/recycled, leading to no moral conflict at all!

Perhaps the rest are all in the 500,000 most virtuous, lowest carbon footprint segment of society. So in their minds they can justify throwing away one (shared) tent per year. I doubt that everyone who moans about "tentgate" is entirely guilt-free.

And then there are probably a few thousand who DO take their tent away (it might be a cherished artefact from their first ever Glasto).

We don't know.

You can take too extreme a view on these matter sometimes ...


Got to say I think horizon's outrage is justified, especially when you consider the fsetival's origins.

As for folk claiming they leave trash behind because they assume some good fairy will recycle it - words fail me.

You accept their line?

They brought it, they can take it away.
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Has anyone here been to a festival ever, especially recently?
Cannae imagine the attraction of such events
If one had a bit of luck with the weather one could sleep outside, no need for a tent at all

I did go to a festival a few times: the York Rally organised by the ctc
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by eileithyia »

Best I heard recently on the radio, someone who was not prepared to take home her dirty muddy tent so left it behind for someone else to it clean up and recycle for 'homeless' or where ever it might be used!!!!!
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by Bmblbzzz »

Plenty of homeless people living in tents, so if it actually got put to that use, good for her.
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by softlips »

Bmblbzzz wrote:Plenty of homeless people living in tents, so if it actually got put to that use, good for her.



According to the same radio programme it’s a myth they’re recycled. Apparently several years ago it was tried but not carried on. Also, they said the quality of most of the tents was too poor to use for homeless people.

I did see at Silverstone one year someone come with a huge brand new tent (with awning), new beds, sleeping bags, BBQ, two cool boxes and fire pit. They left the lot after the race, including the boxes everything had come in! I got the BBQ myself, along with a roll of 500 (!) black sacks, and two nice brass lanterns. I helped another guy get the awning as he had the same tent.

Apparently this year, helicopters are a popular way to get into Glastonbury, so much for saving the planet.
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Saving the planet, no need, tivi presenters are jetting round the world to make programs to inform us of the mess we are in, that should take care of it :?
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by Phil Fouracre »

Not going to worry myself too much, we’re way past the point of no return, we try to be as green as possible, but, not really going to achieve a lot :-(
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by Bmblbzzz »

softlips wrote:
Bmblbzzz wrote:Plenty of homeless people living in tents, so if it actually got put to that use, good for her.



According to the same radio programme it’s a myth they’re recycled. Apparently several years ago it was tried but not carried on. Also, they said the quality of most of the tents was too poor to use for homeless people.

I did see at Silverstone one year someone come with a huge brand new tent (with awning), new beds, sleeping bags, BBQ, two cool boxes and fire pit. They left the lot after the race, including the boxes everything had come in! I got the BBQ myself, along with a roll of 500 (!) black sacks, and two nice brass lanterns. I helped another guy get the awning as he had the same tent.

Recycled or reused? 'Festival tents' and 'pop up tents' are clearly not going to be good enough for living in and almost certainly unsaleable. They might get recycled, as in sold for scrap fabric (nylon) value, which is probably close to zero. A tent like your Silverstone example or the abandoned cos it was muddy example could presumably have been either sold or reused, depending on the policy of the charity involved. The same, of course, applies to many old clothes donated to charity shops: they don't get sold but the charity still gets some income from selling them to businesses which recover the fabrics and/or ship them to other parts of the world.
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Re: Glastonbury - no single-use plastics? You must be joking!

Post by AlaninWales »

Bmblbzzz wrote:Recycled or reused? 'Festival tents' and 'pop up tents' are clearly not going to be good enough for living in and almost certainly unsaleable. They might get recycled, as in sold for scrap fabric (nylon) value, which is probably close to zero. A tent like your Silverstone example or the abandoned cos it was muddy example could presumably have been either sold or reused, depending on the policy of the charity involved. The same, of course, applies to many old clothes donated to charity shops: they don't get sold but the charity still gets some income from selling them to businesses which recover the fabrics and/or ship them to other parts of the world.

Re clothes and charity shops. That is certainly no always the case: I am in the process of checking over and taking my late wife's clothes to a charity shop in Carmarthen. This week I saw some of these donated clothes on the rack and the hat I took in as part of the batch was sold before I left the shop. Clean and presentable clothes do re-sell, bringing in more income to the charity and providing a way of circulating well-styled clothing.
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