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’m not defending tent leavers, but it’s a long walk back to the bus/car park at most festivals. After three days of drinking (and whatever else) it’s unlikely that you can ever make people take down their wrecked, wet (probably worse) 30 quid tent.
just build in the clean up into the ticket fee.

Every weekend, recycling centres are jammed full of people with carloads, dumping perfectly good chairs, furniture, lamps, kids toys and many other household items that are fine, but they just don’t want.

They all end up in landfill. As a society we are so wasteful.

Reading campsites are awful, and it’s such a shame because they get a good line up and I live quite close, but last time I went, about 25 years ago, it was grim and I felt too old for that shit at about 18, too many entitled, drunk boys behaving like utter dickheads. Looks like it’s got worse.

My DS works at lots of festivals. Some of the left tents are collected by charities. Most are binned. Some festival are worse than others. Reading with all the GCSE drunk kids seems to one of the worst. On the plus side he hasn't had to buy a new tent for 15 years. Just finds an abandoned one if he needs it

I don't care if clean up costs are factored into the ticket price it is still absolutely disgusting that people just up and leave everything behind.

I used to live near the park where the V Festival took place. I saw the awful mess left behind which took quite a few workers about a week to clear.

It's not just tents left behind. There was also sleeping bags, air beds, tables, chairs, barbeques (not just the disposable ones), clothes, food, drink.

I spoke to the clean up workers a few times and they said they found money, unopened bottles of drink such as whisky, unopened food such as packs of burgers, burger buns, sausages.

Me and DH used to walk our dog there but couldn't when the festival was on. One year we were allowed in to walk when most of the clearing up had been done. There was still quite a lot of items lying around and I found a pair of Timberland boots which looked brand new and, lucky for me, were my size. I told one of the cleanup workers that I had found them and he said to keep them.

It's absolute rubbish to say people leave the tents behind because they know they are collected for charities. Every year they were asked to take their tents down and if they did not want to take them home to place them in certain spots. Why should people employed to clear up have to take down so many tents?

The majority of the tents don't go to charities anyway, they end up in landfill.

An absolute shower of manky, selfish bastards, that's what they are. I loathe litter louts indescribably much.

You're absolutely right.

A clean up levy ought to be applied to each ticket so it pays for people to be able to clean up the mess the filthy lazy bastards couldn't be bothered to.

We go to festivals regularly - with my kids and without.

Most festival are not like this. I've not been to Reading (and we're too old) but my DD keeps talking about going.

Our favourite festival positively encourages recycling and tidying and making as small an impact as possible. They even encourage you to donate tents and camping gear to refugee camps.

There are also young people there, who go without families and they just don't do this.

Not all festivals and festival goers are the same. I've been to 5 festivals this summer (including Glastonbury) and after all of them people took their stuff away! It can be done. Reading and Leeds aren't doing it! Watch the Woodstock 99 documentary if you want to see the kind of attitudes that lead to this kind of behaviour. If you treat people like garbage they'll act like garbage. Treat them with respect they act with respect.

This is greenbelt after the campers left. No clean up crew, no rubbish. No tents. It's perfectly possible.

OP, not all festivals are the same and if you love live music, you would (probably) really enjoy one of the smaller, lesser known, less crowded festivals, with people of similar mindset to you. Reading is notorious and not typical of music festivals in general. Glastonbury is obviously another big one for you to avoid (not difficult these days!).

YANBU but obviously it’s not that simple

Our local scout group go and help tidy and are allowed to keep the tents

Reading Festival is absolutely not typical of festivals, I've been to three this summer and they were all left clean and tidy at the end.
I went to Reading once, years ago, it was absolutely horrible but I love festivals.
The tent idea is good but impossible to police. I can't see how it would work.

Whilst littering in general is awful, at a festival it's not like it's just left in a public park to rot - its part of the cost of running a commercial money making festival. Same as a nightclub or any other venue holding an event. You factor in tidying up in the ticket price. And they make a bloody fortune!

The eco aspect of the plastic / waste is the same whoever tidies it away.

How would they know the owner of an
Abandoned tent?

Tell me your ideas for
Monitoring that

The waste is disgusting.
Its not the money making organisers who will have to live with the dire consequences of global warming and land fill is it. They profit from it so they should somehow be taxed on all the rubbish that is left.

I think a lot of people have those pop up tents which take a nanosecond to put up but are almost impossible to work out how to fold down unless you are very spacialy aware. At the end of a festival most aren’t very spacialy aware 🥴

I'm actually perturbed by the number of people who are basically excusing the appalling behavior of festival-goers based on the idea that "the price of cleaning up the mess is priced into the ticket price."

Remember the "broken windows" theory of policing? That if you excuse, laugh off and ignore petty misbehavior, it sends out the wrong signals to everyone? It makes public spaces feel threatening and unwelcoming, which damages social trust. It encourages people to commit more and more petty misdemeanors. And it hints to the worst members of society that there isn't a lot of social pressure to behave properly, encouraging them to try their luck with the really bad behavior. Litter and abandoned tents MATTER.

Festivals like this should be shut down and not held again if we are seeing evidence that people can't behave properly. I get that we've just had two years of COVID misery, but people can and do enjoy themselves without trashing their environments.

I've just seen pictures of the post festival field at Shrewsbury. .... its just grass.

I'm fairly sure the logistics aren't very different. So it is entirely possible to clear up after yourself.

I think there are some good posts on here about that they factor in the cost of the clear up into the ticket (still doesn't make it right) the horrible setting of fires and exploding canisters (my kids have witnessed this and it is scary), and some festivals being more responsible than others (not all festivals or festival goers are bad). I personally wish the notorious ones were safer for the young people involved, they are often only 16 years old and ill-equipped / short of money / get out of their depth quickly - and it seems all "normal rules" are suspended for the pursuit of profit. It is an interesting point about the scout groups though. Most in my District do NOT go to help tidy because the risk is considered too high. There is sometimes drug paraphernalia / needles about and unfortunately the tents are too soiled inside (people taking their last dump rather than walking to the "by now dreadful" loos) or not that waterproof, slashed or broken to be of use. It is great if some groups can get something out of it though. I also salute all of those who work at these festivals in a supportive way, offering water, a quiet cup of tea and a chat, medical needs to the young people, and I hope that the festival organisers contribute heavily to those that do.

People are disgusting. We just got back from the beach. Families leaving bits of broken plastic buckets, dirty socks, glass and food cartons all over the beach ready to be washed in the sea. There were bins available all over. They don’t even have the youth or drunkenness as an excuse.

I agree it’s a problem much worse at reading/ Leeds. Most other festivals now are shit hot on the whole environmental ethos and people take pride in that even when they are fucked.

And it’s not just visible rubbish - try and piss in a ditch in Glastonbury and your getting booed by 100s if not 1000s of people.

I think the problem at R/L is partly demographic, partly organiser. 1000s of 16yos who have never even been to a bar let alone a festival equals a problem.
The set up of the event makes it worse with the one main arena area and then little in the campsites so you don’t have any natural surveillance/through-fare.

The setup of the bars/alcohol all being in the arena and no bringing alcohol / drinks too and from camp causes issues. People take more drugs if they can’t drink or run out. People also leave arena and then don’t have their drinks so raid others tents, or take more drugs or get bored and cause chaos. I much prefer Glastonbury’s openness with no boundary between campsite and arenas. Everything dotted around so you get that natural activity/ surveillance. That you can take your own drink and everyone float around in a chilled way rather than fighting to get into arenas, fighting to get to the bar, to get out again etc. It’s a recipe for pure chaos all round.

I hate the fact that disposable festival culture has spread into regular camping. At many sites, if there's poor weather people will abandon their tents and scarper. Even when damaged gear is taken to the bins, it's still bulky and expensive for the site owners to deal with.

I've once had a tent destroyed in a storm and the sodden bundle of fractured fibreglass and ripped nylon at least came home with me. It was a brutal night (I was stranded in a mountain shelter so had no chance to protect the tent) and the site couldn't cope with disposing with the quantity of tents that had been destroyed.
At more commercial sites people do think it's acceptable to dump and run. I know one site that uses a tractor to smush the broken gear into the skips it happens that often.

I live near a popular beach and they do the same there every night in the summer. Unwanted possessions just left, to be washed into the sea or removed by one overworked litter-picker. It makes me have extremely dark thoughts about humanity. We don’t deserve this planet.