Festival tents straight to landfill

MadsL · 11-09-2011 01:05PM #1

I wonder how many boardsies abandoned a tent at a festival this year?

This from the Gardai in Stradbally "none of the abandoned camping gear is being salvaged. "It's being bulldozed and dumped," one guard said.

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I was ignorant of the fact that charities no longer take abandoned tents. I bought a canvas bell tent for this season (and the rest of my life hopefully) so I get to feel smug (but I have never abandoned a tent anyway having had "leave no trace" drilled into me as a kid)

So - will you stop abandoning next year?? Or will the lure of cheap supermarket tents and easy getaways prove too much?

11-09-2011 01:27PM

I took my tent, but I believed the Scouts were cleaning up the tents, keeping the good ones and sending the rest away for relief aid?

D-Generate · 11-09-2011 01:48PM

With the amount of used condoms and who knows what-else in the tents then I imagine that there are not many out there willing to go through each one and clean them up.

bodhrandude · 11-09-2011 01:53PM

Yeh I couldnt believe some of the good quality tents left behind in the Hendrix campsite, 6 person Halford tents, had I the energy and space, wouldve taken some with me. Tents like in that Jpeg.

MadsL · 11-09-2011 02:02PM

I took my tent, but I believed the Scouts were cleaning up the tents, keeping the good ones and sending the rest away for relief aid?

Apparently not: Scouts were helping put up tents, not taking them down. Also from a Health & Safety point of view I wouldn't want 10-11 year olds touching the tents after the festival; I have heard stories of 'toilet' tents being left behind.

According to Glastonbury it is cheaper and greener to landfill them as charities cannot use the masses of tents left. In 2005 10,000 tents were left at Glasto. A volunteer estimated 25 - 30k tents left behind in 2007.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/868621-glastonbury-tents-will-end-up-as-landfill-as-charities-not-interested

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qeBm-0Sea0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DXNSL_1tmY

Interesting comment below this video;

A festival created by people who care, for people who mostly don't.

Camping gear is so cheap to buy that it has become disposable. Take note Tesco, Halfords, Asda, Argos et al - you are driving this!

Hard-working men and women are (as you read this) working 12 hours plus, seven days a week, often hundreds of miles from their families, for months on end, putting together these tents/chairs/gazebos/airbeds for a wage that barely sustains them - simply so that you can throw them away because it's too much to ask for you to remove the things you took three or four trips to bring onto the festival site away with you.

There is no way to recycle most of these items - they will go into landfil - and you don't care!

Think-on people, you know who you are!

Whilst I'm on a whingey rant, I was shocked by the attitudes at Electric Picnic this year - sculptures smashed for a .10c LED light, the denim moose ripped to shreds. A lot of people put a shed load of work into making a great party for you - is it that hard to show some respect and (important bit) make sure others show some respect?

bodhrandude · 11-09-2011 02:19PM

MadsL wrote: »

Apparently not: Scouts were helping put up tents, not taking them down. Also from a Health & Safety point of view I wouldn't want 10-11 year olds touching the tents after the festival; I have heard stories of 'toilet' tents being left behind.

According to Glastonbury it is cheaper and greener to landfill them as charities cannot use the masses of tents left. In 2005 10,000 tents were left at Glasto. A volunteer estimated 25 - 30k tents left behind in 2007.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/868621-glastonbury-tents-will-end-up-as-landfill-as-charities-not-interested

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qeBm-0Sea0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DXNSL_1tmY

Whilst I'm on a whingey rant, I was shocked by the attitudes at Electric Picnic this year - sculptures smashed for a .10c LED light, the denim moose ripped to shreds. A lot of people put a shed load of work into making a great party for you - is it that hard to show some respect and (important bit) make sure others show some respect?

Morons the lot of them, I remember marvelling with my mate at the denim moose, such destructive folk should be shot with a ball of their own excrement and banished from the Electric Picnic festival for good.

minidazzler · 11-09-2011 07:56PM

I have used the same tent since 2009, so for me that's 5 festivals and probably another 20 camping trips. I bought it for 45 euro and only at Oxegen this year did one of the poles split so I have to replace it. Will take 20 mins to do and my tent is good as new again.

People are idiots for throwing away tents. That extra 20 they spend on tesco tents would get you a good bit of booze.

Toast · 11-09-2011 10:30PM

Tents where never being reused by charities. Festival tents are completely useless for any aid work. Hot climates need proper canvas tents designed for that climate. Anyone who had to deal with a whopping 20c day sun in a tent in Ireland should realise that the same tent in a climate that reaches 45 to 50c is not going to be even remotely viable and probably lethal.

It was an unfortunate rumour / misunderstanding that surfaced one Glastonbury and appeared to hang around and spread to other festivals because it allowed people to believe taking the easy option was also the good option.

honru · 11-09-2011 10:49PM

I came across some large and decent tents abandoned at Electric Picnic... such a waste.

catch--22 · 12-09-2011 09:40AM

Toast wrote: »

Tents where never being reused by charities. Festival tents are completely useless for any aid work. Hot climates need proper canvas tents designed for that climate. Anyone who had to deal with a whopping 20c day sun in a tent in Ireland should realise that the same tent in a climate that reaches 45 to 50c is not going to be even remotely viable and probably lethal.

It was an unfortunate rumour / misunderstanding that surfaced one Glastonbury and appeared to hang around and spread to other festivals because it allowed people to believe taking the easy option was also the good option.

Not sure about them be used by charities but the scouts were collecting tents a few years ago at festivals to be sent to other scout associations in countries that needed them. I think East Timor was the main recipient.

Toast · 12-09-2011 10:33AM

If they were doing that they were doing it without checking with the aid agency first who'd have told them not to bother or to ebay the tents and send them the proceeds instead. Also they certainly wouldn't be running around packing up abandoned tents.. they might have had a drop off point for donated tents which were already packed up. I know a couple of people with connections to the scouts in EP and I'll see if I can find out what that was.

catch--22 · 12-09-2011 11:15AM

Toast wrote: »

If they were doing that they were doing it without checking with the aid agency first who'd have told them not to bother or to ebay the tents and send them the proceeds instead. Also they certainly wouldn't be running around packing up abandoned tents.. they might have had a drop off point for donated tents which were already packed up. I know a couple of people with connections to the scouts in EP and I'll see if I can find out what that was.

To my knowledge this had nothing to do with aid agencies but with a direct link to the scout association in East Timor. The tents were being sent directly to scout troops as part of 'twinning' type programme a few years back. A bit sketchy on this so I could be wrong...and it was maybe 3-4 picnics ago.

FewFew · 13-09-2011 12:29AM

Toast wrote: »

If they were doing that they were doing it without checking with the aid agency first who'd have told them not to bother or to ebay the tents and send them the proceeds instead. Also they certainly wouldn't be running around packing up abandoned tents.. they might have had a drop off point for donated tents which were already packed up. I know a couple of people with connections to the scouts in EP and I'll see if I can find out what that was.

There are plenty of needy countries around the world that don't suffer from super hot weather, and I'm sure that some use for the material could be made, sure you see refugee camps where plastic bags are used etc.

Shame they're being put into a landfill. The group next to us left about 7 tents and 12 fold-out chairs. I assumed they were just having a lie-in, until it got later in the day and I realised they just walked out and left all their gear.

Another tent (like a €200 jobbie) was left next to us and eventually came home with us.

Toast · 13-09-2011 01:22AM

Fewcifur wrote: »

There are plenty of needy countries around the world that don't suffer from super hot weather, and I'm sure that some use for the material could be made, sure you see refugee camps where plastic bags are used etc.

There will always be someone who'll find some use for something but actually getting it to them costs money and when the item is nowhere near ideal it doesn't make sense to waste limited resources doing that. The solution isn't for the festival to try and find a use for the tents it is to get people to stop leaving the tents behind.

MadsL · 14-09-2011 10:46PM

get people to stop leaving the tents behind.

+1

VNP · 15-09-2011 11:55PM

If they knew this they must have had some sort of evil intent.......

BrianD · 16-09-2011 10:16AM

Nobody would abandon a decent tent.

Nearly all the tents that are abandoned are the type that are bought in supermarkets for next to nothing. They are almost single use products.

I can't imagine how they would benefit anybody in the developing world. I can't imagine how they would benefit any organisation, say scouts, that would use tents on a regular basis.

So these tents now mean that there's a huge amount of non recyclable waste being produced by festivals. Carbon footprint goes through the roof.

How do you ensure that everybody takes away their tent? Perhaps a tent deposit? But something like this would be next impossible to enforce at a 3 day festival.

Also I think the owner of the Lexus mentioned in the article probably just lost their keys rather than "inexplicably" leaving it behind.

MadsL · 17-09-2011 02:48PM

I'm thinking "camping plus" is the future - camping plus is where you get allocated a square to camp in - you pay a premium for reserved space.

If this were mandatory you could effectively fine people who fail to clear their space.

MadsL · 17-09-2011 02:49PM

VNP wrote: »

If they knew this they must have had some sort of evil intent.......

I see what you did there...:D

gozunda · 17-09-2011 03:03PM

Its a throwaway generation....:mad:

I was at festivals in the 70's and 80's and people did not leave their tents behind even when tents were old, patched and fairly manky from years of use

I believe I still have a tent from this era in the loft - in the end it leaked, weighed a couple of stone but was carefully patched and packed away each time it was used

People did not have the money to buy and throw away such items...

Tents, Wellingtons, camping gear should not be abandoned - if someone is such a lazy bzstard that they cant even clean up after themselves then they should have to bear the full brunt of all cleanup costs

Well looks like kids might not have the large wads of cash been thrown at them as was the case with the celtic tiger...roll it on I say!

Festival tents straight to landfill

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