To say take your festival tent home and reuse it

[Theolittle]

If you don’t It ends up in landfill. There is a myth out there that it goes to charity, it’s not true. To go to charity it would need to be spotlessly clean and the charity workers would need to be able to pack the tents properly. The people that leave the tents don’t leave them in good condition and are just lazy ignorant horrible wasteful people. It’s disgusting - the people that do this are disgusting. Glastonbury and other festivals should be telling people it goes to landfill and to stop doing it

The whole thing is fucking disgusting, over-entitled wankers leaving their plastic shite everywhere.

This wasn't normal when I was attending festivals in the 90s but suppose you didn't pay hundreds of pounds for a ticket.

it’s good that some get used but most don’t. I’ve spoken to other charity workers about this and they won’t take them. And people leave them full of their shit, why should charity workers have to sort it all out? If people were bothered they should empty the tent and pack it away. Scumbags. And other half-nice people will read your comment and justify leaving their tent in case it gets used. No one should assume it does and it needs to be seen as a bad thing to do.

If you read about this it only applues to two tent brands and has lots of conditions for them to accept, for example -

1. If the tent is damaged, stained, wet, contaminated, altered, or in any circumstance where its resale value is significantly diminished, Decathlon will reject its return.

Yes, we get them on Dartmoor too. During lockdown some of these idiots camped on an SSSI there too. But we get kids out there too with cheap tents, seen them leave soiled toilet paper behind, in places where people regularly walk too.

I don't understand why genuine wild campers go on defending them, which they seem to do.

My DS goes to a festival where part of your ticket price is a deposit which you only get back when you present a certain number of rubbish sacks at the exit.

What if you haven't generated enough rubbish? Last time I was at a festival I had less than 1 black sack. I would have had to have binned all my recyclables, rather than disposing of them in the correct bins all weekend.

It’s understandable that some of the tents are too cheap and too damaged to be reused. Festival organizers could provide sufficient trash receptacles. That way people would at least face the reality of exactly where the tent was going and there would be less work for crews.

The mess left after Glastonbury is disgusting. I’d have it banned.
Scummy tramps.

I’ve abandoned a tent once (not at Glasto). It was my first pop-up one and I think they were a new thing. I couldn’t collapse the fecking thing despite watching YouTube vids, copious reading of instructions and the combined efforts of a selection of randoms. I even tried to wrestle it whole into the boot of my SUV, but failed miserably at that too.

I retrieved the tent pegs because you can never have enough of those! 😁

I did wonder how many of those “abandoned” at Glasto were pop-ups because I have never found a satisfactory technique for collapsing them.

I think the idea is that you clear up rubbish from the site as a whole. And they have separate sacks for recycling.

Ah right. To be fair the festival I usually go to (Greenbelt) everyone clears up their own rubbish so you'd be hard pushed to find the extra to have enough. I guess it's not the sort of festival that needs rules like that though!

DH goes to Metal festivals in Europe (France, Germany etc). There's a cup deposit, so they think nothing about picking up any discarded ones to get extra money off at the bars...

He's mentioned full bin bags being exchanged for festival credit (food, drink, merch) as well.

I left the TT with 17 tents, 20 sleeping bags and a load of collapsible chairs, inflatable pillows, camping mattresses a shit load of beers and a few other random items. Sold £430 worth so far and I'm not even halfway through it 😁 bollocks to taking a motorbike and a shitty little tent - camper vans pay for their own crossing!

Yes one Kendal calling we came away with a brand new in box gazebo and a crate of beer. I was very cautious about taking leftover stuff helping with the cleanup and would be more proactive next time.

But you expect someone else to clear up your ‘disgusting’ tent? Charming

I have been to several different sorts of festivals

I have always brought my tent back

Another infuriating side of this is that the culture has leached into general camping in the past 15-20 years, and people will ditch tents for the site owner to bear the disposal costs of.

Often people didn't pitch the tent properly in the first place, didn't check it through the stay so it's either flappy or gets minor, repairable damage and they just abandon it. That could easily have been avoided with a bit of care.

The "DIY festivalers" blasting out their crappy music all the time can fuck off too.

YANBU. Leaving a festival tent behind is no better than littering/flytipping.

My DS and his mates came back from Glastonbury with a great haul of camping stuff. Tents, chairs and a cool box. His friend even took an empty bag so he could pack it all and walk it out. A family member also has a massive inflatable tent that was left behind. It's terrible that people just leave it all, but if you are not in a hurry you can pick up some really good stuff.

Circular Camping take them, refurbish them and sell them the following year at Download. Helps the ones that come via coach etc. Mind you there’s way less abandoned ones there than at Glastonbury.

My friend got loads of free stuff this year after Glastonbury. She was horrified at the amount of stuff left behind

My dad is still mad at my cousin, 30 years on, for borrowing his tent and packing it up wet and not telling him, when he eventually went to use it had mould and mildew 🙁

😂

Happy to confirm ds's brand new tent didn't end up in the landfill.
Someone set it on fire..
Luckily ds wasn't in it.

When you pitch a tent it costs you a 50 quid deposit. Bring them your packed up tent, you get your deposit back.

I saw a photo yesterday of a woman sitting on the pitch at Wembley after Live Aid. She was sitting on piles of rubbish and in the photo you do ent see even an inch of the pitch. People leaving rubbish behind them at large events is not a new thing.