AIBU to think people should be fined if they leave their tents?

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I have just seen the mess left behind at the Reading festival. An absolute disgrace! The amount of rubbish and tents left behind that organisers are forced to clear up. What makes people think this is ok? I have:

a) Always wondered why people feels it's ok to leave their mess behind like this. They obviously don't care

b) Can't comprehend how people can pay good money for a tent only to chuck it away after

c) Never been to a festival because I know I just couldn't handle the filth and chaos of it all, so I struggle to understand the above two points.

Is there not a way event organisers can encourage attendees to tidy up after themselves? More waste bins? Attendees given a ticket / wrist band that shows they did or didn't arrive with a tent and then fined at the end if they do not leave with what they came with? As I said I've not been to a festival before, so I have no idea how it all works. But I find the aftermath absolutely disgusting 😡

I worked at a festival this weekend. Arrived Thursday. 12 hrs after the music finished, all of the punters had taken themselves and all of their kit home. Site was immaculate.
Not all festivals are the same!

Oooh, what kind of things has he found/been able to keep Ihatethenewlook?

@Applebark that festival looks like the best festival ever.

its been the same for a long time too, when I first went to reading (a good 15 or so clearly ago!) a group of us had to physically stop a group of idiots from dragging a tent with a passed out girl inside into a fire. It does get really scary.
i couldn't even find my tent at that point let alone pack it away

😂

Who's going to police it though? There's not enough security there as it is. Too many people attending. Its the greed of the people that run it.
They need to reduce the numbers of people going. There wasn't even enough space for people to sit down.
Entitled teenagers setting fire to tents. Morons. More money than sense otherwise they'd have taken them home. Lucky the whole place didn't go up in flames with the dry weather we've been having. How the organisers couldn't have anticipated that after its been happening for the past few years pre pandemic and acted to prevent it beggars belief.

I'm too old for Reading, but I did read about an Eco Camp at Leeds. I believe there was a surcharge applied to ensure that no rubbish was left behind. This is a good way forward, in my opinion. Maybe extend this to a larger part of the festival next year with some incentives to take your shit home.

I do agree with others that it is the demographic at Reading/Leeds who are to blame. It's now got a reputation, unfortunately, that will take a hell of a long time to repair.

Just as well these kids don't start showing up at Bloodstock. . . 😂

How the hell has your son managed to get Glastonbury tickets every year for 12 years.. do you know how lucky that is

'Misses the point completely'

It totally depends on the festival. The first one I attended was Reading and it put me off them for some years. Thefts, fights, the constant threat of fires, and full portaloos being tipped over with people inside them...
The kind of festivals I go to now are left very clean. They are low/lower capacity and as the music is a fairly small scene, many of the attendees know each other. It is almost more like a community gathering (of 1 to 12k people). Most people will pick their pitch clean and take their rubbish to the bins. Very occasionally you may see someone has picked their pitch and neatly bagged the rubbish, leaving the bag to be collected but that is the worst of it. No equipment is ever left. A lot of the festi-goers at these events work a number of the bigger festivals, and I can confirm PPs' claims that the ones who do site clearance have acquired all manner of things that have been left behind. They always turn up to festivals/camping very well kitted out in new-looking decent-branded equipment.

Wasn't this (vandalism) a problem last year too? I'm sure that I remember a thread. Sounds like it's very much to be expected.

I don’t disagree but tents at festivals are not like a campsite where you are assigned a specific pitch. It’s essentially a free for all grab a space in a field. Almost impossible to police it.

cheap shitty tents are fine for a festival and for some it’s a disposable environment. Festivals need to realise it and while some have tent donation points they need to provide better bulk disposal areas

it’s awful and wasteful and people shouldn’t litter but part of it also has to be placed back at the organisers

Not all festivals are the same, I went to one over the weekend and I only saw one thing that was left on the floor in the area we were (which was then taken by someone else). There were huge fenced off areas for rubbish and recycling which would have helped.

One year some of the festivals said to leave the tents behind so they could be donated to refugee camps, not sure which one that was though.

The mess left at Reading (and the behaviour by the sounds of it) was a disgrace.

I'm pretty sure I benefited from someone's discarded tents as I bought two Quechua two-man pop-ups from Ebay for £20 from a man who did catering at festivals. He said they were his kids' old tents but he was selling an awful lot more tents almost weekly throughout festival season. I only intended to buy one tent but he offered me a second one for a fiver as he "needed the room".
They've been fantastic and we've used them several times a year for the past 7 or 8 years.
Thank you to the idiots who left them behind!
My kids know that if they return without their tent they'll be taken back to collect it, if the festival is reasonably local.

There is a clean up fee included in the festival price because this happens every year.

The price includes employing staff clearing up, it happens at nearly every festival. The cost of clean up is built in to the price. It’s about 300 quid just for entry, car parking is about 40 quid a day and camping is about 500 quid for a 4 man tent. 300 for a two man which is tiny. Going to reading costs about a grand before you’ve even bought a drink or a sandwich.

I can't get too het up about this as I've just come back from clearing a festival field and the charity I was working with are now fully stocked with tents, sleeping bags and other really useful stuff. And several monitory donates too!

Anyone think about the time it would take to ensure everyone left with everything they brought with them..

Time to get everyone off site and clear up is short, and it takes less person-power to get rid of bodies first and then clean up the mess, than it would to get everyone packed up, ensure they left with a tent if they brought on, deal with fines etc... That would have a knock on effect on the local area too.

The issue is, smaller festivals can be much cleaner and tidier because they are smaller.

If everyone goes to them, they get bigger.

They're also smaller because they aren't hosting the big name bands people really want to see... if they did, to attract more people, they'd need to be bigger..a and round and round it goes.

For 3 or 4 years he volunteered there (wristbanding and stuff like that) and got free entrance and a couple of times he didn't get a ticket first time but got one in the resale which has included a coach and has had to travel to to catch it. So not all straightforward, I think you have to be prepared to travel on your own and meet up there, I did wonder though how he got so lucky myself as I had heard ticked were hard to get nowadays, I went in 1984 and it was a lot easier then.

We bought him the tent when he was about 17 from Millets sale, it was a bit better one than the £20 ones and it is used every time.

Makes me very sad. And angry.

I'm surprised at the mess left by kids from the generation that's supposed to be really concerned about climate change etc. Not having a dig, it just genuinely puzzles me.

Agree that it would be hard to police, and tents are too cheap to worry about. In my day (old biddy alert) they more expensive so we took them with us.

Weekend tickets include camping. The costs you are referring to are for Camping Plus, which is an optional upgrade.

Leaving tents behind is the least of the problems with Reading Festival.
Personally I think it shouldn't take place again.
It's dangerous and the problems need to be addressed.

As I said I've not been to a festival before, so I have no idea how it all works.

Clearly.

The leaving of the tents I dislike on environmental grounds. But I'm not worried about volunteers as festivals have always had people who volunteer in order to get free tickets, that is part of how it works.

I also think a lot of older people criticise this rubbish rather than thinking about their own waste and environmental impact. Those in glass houses etc.

Ultimately no-one really cares, we live in a throwaway society. To stop this the organisers would need to have restrictions placed on their license. I am sure they'd manage to provide a safer event if the alternative was it being cancelled.