Disgusted with the rubbish left behind at Reading Festival

[mydogisthebest]

Every festival is the same, tons of rubbish left behind.

All those tents just left and most of them will be going to landfill they said this morning.

Considering the average festival goer is fairly young why do they not care about all the rubbish? The lazy so and so's can't even be bothered to take the tents down let alone carry them to the collection point.

Apparently there was also loads of food just left!

These are the youngsters that supposedly care about the planet and climate change. Yeah like hell they do. Some might but the majority just don't.

The mentality of buying a tent and food and other items and then just up and leaving them just beggars belief. The parents have obviously not taught values.

I used to live very close to where the V Festival was held and the amount of rubbish left behind used to amaze me every year.

Apparently it will take a team (no idea how many) 2 weeks to clear Reading.

It makes me so angry

@Abraxan

Re the age thing.

Festivals have been around for many many years. I'm late 40s and festivals were a thing when I was a teen. They were a thing way before that too,

Festivals have always had the same issue with tents and rubbish left behind. Go decades back and older people complained of exactly the same issues.

So surely some of those older ones are always the same ones who were younger back then.

Maybe people just grow up and become a bit more responsible.
Or maybe people just grow up and like to lay the blame on the youngsters. 🤷‍♀️

But it certainly isn't a new problem at all!

Me, DH and 6 friends went to Reading over 40 years ago. We, of course, did not leave our tent behind and I don't recall seeing any tents left behind.

There also definitely was not the tons of rubbish left behind.

So absolute nonsense to say there has always been the problem with rubbish and tents left behind.

Also all the stories of how drunk/drugged the attendees are also disgusts me. Setting fire to tents, throwing missiles etc!!!

So if we didn't do it then why is it happening now?

All this talk of vomit, piss and shit being thrown around certainly puts me off festival....Went to Reading in 2005 and 2006, don't remember it being that bad but maybe I've blocked it out

*festivals

So even if we accept that a tent only costing £20 being used once is somehow acceptable (I don't think it is at all - my umbrella only cost £1 and I can easily afford that so shall I throw it away each time I use it and get another?) the festival attendees were asked to either take their tent down or take them down and take them to the collection point. No they could not be bothered so just literally rolled out of them and went home.

Bins may have been full and even overflowing but anyone with any sense would put their rubbish by the bin not just leave it in or by their tent so all the fields are strewn with it.

The cost of cleaning up may well be included in the ticket price but if a mess was not left there would be no need for cleaners would there?

Two weeks of cleaning up by god knows how many people is absolutely disgusting. No way anyone can say it is not.

Again, I just don't get the throwaway attitude of some many people. One year after V Festival me and DH walked our dog through the park and the cleanup was still ongoing (this was over a week after the end of the festival and we didn't realise it was still ongoing). There were tents left, chairs, tables, proper barbeques, lots of clothes, lots of alcohol from packs of beer to bottles of unopened spirits.

I spotted a pair of Timberland boots. They looked completely new and, as they were my size, I took them. Still wearing them years and years later.

When did so many people become so wasteful and why?

DH saw pictures identified one of the tents... costs hundreds... (a big Air tent).

I agree. It's disgusting. All these teens are supposed to be the new age who care about the environment, recycle, don't drop litter.
Clearly not.

YANBU to be annoyed at the rubbish left behind.

It’s been a problem since the inception of festivals though so not a modern youth problem.
Although, I’m sure there are many people who attended the festival who attend rallies and marches about climate change etc who left all their stuff.
My teenage sister is very right on. Attends protests for climate change that stop traffic in our city (and consequently leave people unable to get to the city centre hospital). She also got a lift there and back from my mum and requested a Mac Donald’s on the way home.

I just laugh at her.

Are you clutching your pearls at widespread corporate pollution and wastage as well OP?

@reprehensibleme

'There's often wholly inadequate supplies of bins I've found, I took litter home with me but without a car this isn't always an option.'

Don't understand this - same as people who go on barbecues and picnics and don't take their rubbish home - they bought the stuff in with them - surely it's no more difficult to carry it back? Possibly easier because you've eaten the food, drunk the beer etc.

It's just laziness and arrogance (someone else will clear up).

You don’t take five days of food and drink with you, you buy it at the festival, bind are always full on the first day and aren’t emptied during the festival.

The last time we went to Glastonbury the bins were full well before the first day was even over. They weren’t emptied while the festival was on and the cup exchange (one cup = 5p) closed due to the amount of people returning cups.

It has got worse as tents have got so cheap that they can just be left - I went to Reading as a teen but tents were bloody expensive. Sad to say, had they been cheap-as-chips I can well imagine at that age just leaving it. There are some charities that are collecting usable tents from festivals, but I guess they only have so many resources. If/when my kids start going to festivals I will be clear with them that they are not to be lazy bastards and come back with the bloody tent.

We get these in our camping shop. They most definitely arnt environmentalists. Stupid false equivalence. You sound like fools on facebook complaining kids dont want to be blown up anymore. Amazing how much improving our environment puts a stick up arses.

@BrozTito

We get these in our camping shop. They most definitely arnt environmentalists. Stupid false equivalence. You sound like fools on facebook complaining kids dont want to be blown up anymore. Amazing how much improving our environment puts a stick up arses.

Huh?

We have a THROW AWAY SOCIETY and no respect for belongings.
That's what we teach our children from birth. First it's baby wipes, then juice cartons/bottles and sweet wrappers. Then they move on to electronic gadgets and cloths via cheap plastic tat . And not to forget about all the food because they don't like it or decided to have something else.
People are conditioned to throw away and the economy is geared up for it. Or how else can we have a booming economy?

That's how we end up with the images about the mess left behind by festivals!

"Also all the stories of how drunk/drugged the attendees are also disgusts me. Setting fire to tents, throwing missiles etc!!!

So if we didn't do it then why is it happening now?"

Anyone else wondering what garden partiesfestivals the OP frequented back in the day? No drinking, no drugs, no antisocial behaviour? Really?

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

YANBU to be annoyed at the rubbish left behind.

It’s been a problem since the inception of festivals though so not a modern youth problem.
Although, I’m sure there are many people who attended the festival who attend rallies and marches about climate change etc who left all their stuff.
My teenage sister is very right on. Attends protests for climate change that stop traffic in our city (and consequently leave people unable to get to the city centre hospital). She also got a lift there and back from my mum and requested a Mac Donald’s on the way home.

I just laugh at her.

But it hasn't been a problem since the inception of festivals as I already said.

Some posters want to think (and say) that has always been like that and not just youngsters but it is just not true.

Litter definitely never used to be such a problem. I was taught when young put my rubbish in the bin or take it home and that is something I have always done. I think when I was young that was a pretty common attitude so why is it ok now to throw rubbish everywhere?

BTW my DC brought home all their gear ready for the next festival even the old chair I didn't mind them losing. DH dutifully took it to the recycling centre this afternoon.

@ShaunaTheSheep

"Also all the stories of how drunk/drugged the attendees are also disgusts me. Setting fire to tents, throwing missiles etc!!!

So if we didn't do it then why is it happening now?"

Anyone else wondering what garden partiesfestivals the OP frequented back in the day? No drinking, no drugs, no antisocial behaviour? Really?

Well if you had read my post properly I said I went to READING FESTIVAL.

There certainly was no setting fire to tents or throwing missiles. I guess there was some drug taking but certainly not among anyone I knew. People were drinking and although some may well have been drunk I didn't see or hear any trouble.

I’m sorry @mydogisthebest but you’re wrong

“More than 400,000 music fans and hippies gathered here in 1969 for what would become a legendary weekend of music and revelries. But the festival and its audience left another enduring legacy behind when the music ended – mountains of rubbish.

The trash cans provided by the organisers proved woefully inadequate for the huge numbers of people who turned up, as did the toilet facilities. Piles of bottles, beer cans, discarded sleeping bags, broken tents, plastic sheeting, newspapers and human waste were abandoned and trampled into the muddy quagmire.

It seems astonishing that an event so steeped in the environmental movement at the time should leave an environmental scar that is still visible 50 years later”

www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190627-the-people-fighting-the-war-on-waste-at-music-festivals

I watched a documentary on the development and evolution of festivals only last week and rubbish being left was a main topic.

I used to work near Donington Park, the venue of the Download festival. Every year the pasty, black-clad rock fans would emerge from their bedrooms into the uncomfortable daylight and invade the village in their tens of thousands.

The devastation left behind on the Monday had to be seen to be believed. Tents, clothes, sleeping bags, cool boxes, stoves, supermarket trolleys, the odd burned-out car. The place looked like Kabul and it took three days to clear the site.

Beautiful Days 2017 was the last festival we've been too, after a 10 year hiatus.
It's a midsized family orientated festival run by the Levellers.
We did the usual clean of our plot as we left, as did the vast majority of festival goers. But there were shitty little e pockets of arseholes across the site who smaskwd up their tents and left shit loads of rubbish. Totally no need. There were plenty or recycling facilities and rubbish bins.

@inigomontoyahwillcox

The setting fire thing is terrifying. This is indeed going to end up in tragedy. Surely a stipulation of being able to hold such events is fire marshals? These people should be booted off site.

I stared going to festivals in the 90s (still do a couple a year), I can't remember leaving your tent behind being a thing then. Maybe due to cheap, bad quality tents not being so readily available?

Leeds and Reading are always pretty lawless on the last night and there really aren’t enough security. One of the years I was there they had to bring in the riot police - it was pretty terrifying.

Op - whilst you might not believe there were tents and rubbish left, and there weren't people overdoing it in drink and drugs - I can assure you there was. I saw it at festivals I went to as a young adult in the very early 90s. My parents were going to weekend long outdoor concerts in the late 60s/early 70s - young adults back then were also not playing by the rules.

We didn't have quite the same level of live and roaming media to tell everyone about it so much then though. That's a big difference.

Do you really believe that it's only today's teens and young people who can be disrespectful and over do it?!?

Like today, some behaved responsibly, some didn't.

Older generations have complained about the younger generations forever.

There certainly was no setting fire to tents or throwing missiles. I guess there was some drug taking but certainly not among anyone I knew. People were drinking and although some may well have been drunk I didn't see or hear any trouble.

But my Dd didn't see the heavy drug taking and people being so ill they couldn't function. That's because it's not like that in her group. So she wasn't mixing with the people who did.

As I said my dad went to many a big concerts, which were like pre cursors to some of these festivals. That was late 60s. There were drugs everywhere, and drinking. Drink and drugs are not a new thing amongst young people!

It's easy to not see things if you are mixing in different circles.

For example, the campsite I collected Dd from - tents were being taken down and taken away, rubbish was being carried to large bins on the next campsite, equipment was being packed up and carried off to cars and buses. People were clearing up after themselves.

I didn't see a single tent being left and scrapped - but I know it happens. I've seen the videos year on year of the discarded rubbish and tents.

" I guess there was some drug taking but certainly not among anyone I knew. People were drinking and although some may well have been drunk I didn't see or hear any trouble."

DSS said the bin situation was woefully inadequate, not nearly enough and all completely overflowing. They tried to put their rubbish in nice neat piles, but then drunk people just kicked it everywhere!

He definitely brought loads of rubbish home as he took my car and it took him ages to clean it all out!