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

[adhdforme]

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 saw some clips on Tiktok of a festival, I am not in the UK so not sure if it was this one.

Is this the festival where people were throwing bottles at each other? The clip I saw it was like missiles of bottles being lobbed quite a distance, and then there came a camping chair which hit a woman.....

I would assume now that if you are looking to buy a tent or sleeping bag second hand, ebay will be full of them if some people just dumped them and left.

I go to a small festival, which I don't want to name as I don't want it to become bigger and more popular.
In the 12 years I have gone, only once was a single tent abandoned.
If people's tents break, they pack them up and leave by the bins or check with the marshalls about recycling.
Everyone clears up their rubbish and there are litter picks throughout the day.

Some people leave them because they are broken

You can still take things home that are broken.

It really pisses me off when people just leave their rubbish everywhere.

It’s like they sleep in a field for the night and all of a sudden act like animals.

Take a couple bin bags with you and shove all your rubbish in them.
If you managed to bring your tent and clothes etc then you’re more than capable of taking them home.

The facts are that if people keep acting like twats and leaving litter everywhere then the festivals will just end up not going ahead.

DD is due to attend Reading next year as it seems to have become a rite of passage after GCSEs - but she and friends are thinking of going to a smaller and more civilised festival especially after all the carnage this year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Harry Styles isn't in the line up!!

Perhaps the build into the ticket price, for cleaning up afterwards and if a charity went along whilst the cleaning was happening and grabbed anything that was saleable later on. I agree it's a bloody disgrace how the sites are left and these are the kids that get irate about climate change, it's laughable

@Applebark I wondered what Shambala was like as it's near where I live! I saw all the signs for car parks so did some internet research - it sounds really well organised!

My kids went to Boardmasters near Newquay a few times and there were always lots of tents and rubbish left after that too! Admittedly in the last couple of years they went the tents were left as the festival was cancelled due to sudden hurricane strength winds and torrential rain so they had collapsed!!

Agree with others. Part of the problem isn't people leaving tents - it's the reason why people are leaving their tents.

The last night at reading (and Leeds too) was scary 15-20 years ago when I used to go and it looks like nothing has changed. I don't blame people at all for getting the hell out of there.

It is dreadful.

I stayed after a festival to help clear up about ten years ago and ended up with a free brand new £500 8 man tent. People just buy them for the weekend and then abandon them. I've still got the tent, it's great! But I do wish people wouldn't do it. It doesn't take long at all to take the tent down and even just drop it in a charity shop on the way home. Anything but abandoning them to landfill (which is what happens to most of the abandoned tents)

My daughter age 16 left our tent (Leeds) she rang me very late on the Sunday to pick her up early as it was not safe to sleep in the tents due to fires.
I had told her she must bring the tent home and given her bin bags to stop littering but in this case I told her to grab her stuff and leave it all.
Festivals now are completely different in the fact that the fast food packaging, cans, very cheap tents. It just ends up looking like landfill.
Even the clothes, mine bought loads of cheap festival type stuff online for next to nothing. She’ll never wear it again so in the bin that goes.
The throwaway on that scale would not have happened years ago. It’s the single use stuff and packaging and cheap throwaway crap. Makes a mockery of the hashtag they used.

It would only take longer for the first few years though whilst a habit and culture shift took place. After that people would know the drill and most would comply (a bit like training a toddler). There will always be a few who think they're above it/happy to pay penalties but it would be a manageable minority.

My teen came back without his tent, or chair, both of which were left behind as some utter *rseholes on the last morning were smashing other people's stuff up. Luckily he'd packed his bag and sleeping bag up already and just got out of there, which I'd rather he did than risk getting his head kicked in over a £25 tent frankly.

Just to add, it wasn't down to him being a lazy, irresponsible teen, he'd already been to Boardmaster's this summer, brought his tent and chair back from there, and planned to use his kit for next year's festivals too, so he was just as pissed off as I was that he had to leave it there.

Of course they price the cleanup into the cost of the ticket.

It's why so many of these tabloidy 'look at the state of this festival site!!' are such non-stories. Happens every year and every year it's cleaned up.

Have genuinely never heard any awful Rock at Greenbelt. Christian or otherwise. In fact one of the things my atheist DC loves is the fact there's so much non Christian stuff.

Went to a festival recently, everyone packed up their tents at the end. Mostly an older crowd, but some younger people too.

Everyone took their rubbish to the central collection points too

So it proves that it can be done

I think it's mainly because tents (and all kinds of 'stuff') are now so cheap due to globalisation. I used to go to Reading in the mid/late 90s and very few tents got left behind - really only the completely broken ones. But that's because a tent was expensive, often borrowed from someone's parents, and therefore valuable. Now you can get a small tent for £20, why bother lugging a six-man tent all the way through the campsite and home again.

Also it's permitted - is Reading paid to employ more security to stop people leaving tents behind, it wouldn't happen. But security has never been top of their agenda, even 20+ years ago.

This year I heard Kate Tempest (though from the camping field as I wasn't that bothered by her set), The Young Uns, Ron Artis II, Beans on Toast and Thea Gilmore.

I don't think they actually allow Christian rock, awful or otherwise, these days. Maybe you went in the 80s?

@Applebark The Greenbelt hard core are a bit cross about Shambala because it's really close by and nicked all their headliners but the general feeling was imitation being the sincerest form of flattery!

Beans on Toast even had a whole song about taking your sh*t home.

Good points, but I disagree with "Solutions could possibly be raising the age to over 18s (the majority of the trouble was being caused by young lads)".

So raise the age to 18 for boys, and leave it at 16 for the girls. Why should they be punished because of the boys?

I used to go in the early/mid 90s and it was wild wasn't it?! Back then they used to allow fires in the campsites (or maybe they didn't but there was loads anyway?) and the smoke was so bad you could barely see, and because people would burn everything, it was probably highly toxic too.

You could also park your car next to your tent - I remember seeing 2 guys cracking eggs on their car bonnet to fry them.

I also remember that they banned taking glass bottles into the arena because guys would fill them with piss and throw them at acts they didn't like. I remember the lead singer of L7 pulling her tampon out on stage and throwing it at the crowd in revenge!

The first time I went, in '91, one of my friends was in a porta loo when it got tipped over - we thought it was hilarious at the time. I honestly have grown up to be a productive member of society though; I think teenagers need to be able to let off steam and experience the thrill of danger, and festivals are a fairly safe method of doing this.

Having said that, some festivals are... not for everyone!

If the festival organisers want a nice tidy site at the end, they probably need to provide enough security that whole rows of tents don't end up on fire, with police telling people not to return to their tents or go to sleep because it isn't safe.

@Itstrueiagree My bil does litter picking at a lot of these events. They get to keep what they find and believe me, some of the stuff that’s been left behind in the tents have definitely not been left on purpose

I'm going to want to hear more on this... what's the best/worst/most interesting thing he's ever found?

I've been to Leeds once and I hated it.

I love camping, I love music, I love street food, I love drinking. I hated being so vulnerable.
On the second night we heard a group of lads walking between the tents joking about setting them on fire. I was a Girl Guide back in the day and was always told to sleep with a small pen knife in your tent to help you get out if it caught fire or your entrance was blocked or whatever so I was mentally preparing myself to have to do it when they walked off. Obviously I didn't sleep after that.

The next night, lads were 'tent diving' where they would run and jump into tents. They didn't care if there were people in them or if they broke anything, it was just a laugh for them.
My tent wasn't cheap and I was furious to find it destroyed. We had to pile all our stuff into our friends tent but then hers got robbed. We ended up leaving easy because what was the point in staying?

Our local festival gives free tickets for the following year if you help tidy up on the Tuesday.

I agree with OP, there isn't any legitimate excuse for leaving that amount of rubbish behind!

I am all for being young and having fun, bit not like this. I bet half the kids attending also ageed with "climate change Friday" a few years back... how does that fit into the narrative?