Tens of thousands of tents are discarded at festivals - and I know why
By Karen Luckhurst, June 2014 The Guardian
"Oh to have been a tent manufacturer with a crystal ball in the 1970s.
Back then, camping was in decline, due in part to holidays in the sun becoming cheaper and more available.
But then the sun came out for the likes of Vango et al – not literally, of course, you understand. The rise and rise of the great British music festival over the last couple of decades has made owning a tent a pre-requisite for any under-30. Meanwhile, camping came back into fashion for the over-30s, who rediscovered a cheap and delightful way to holiday with the kids.
Later this month Worthy Farm, near Glastonbury, will host 150,000 revellers, staff and performers. Latitude, in July, will entertain around 35,000: the Isle of Wight this weekend will play host to about 55,000; that's an awful lot of party-goers and tents – and there are many more festivals happening all over the UK this summer.
Each year, tonnes of rubbish are left at festival sites. A figure that includes thousands upon thousands of tents. In one year alone at Glastonbury, 20,000 tents were abandoned, according to Rob Kearle, the festival’s head of refuse and recycling. In an interview with recycling website, Resource, Kearle says the festival tries to recycle what tents it can, however, many still end up in landfill. “Last year, a local woman collected about 1,000 to use to make clothes, and groups like the Boy Scouts and Air Cadets also get to pick through the leftovers,” says Kearle.
Kearle lays the blame for this figure at a throw-away mentality and a change in the demographic of festival-goers from the original green-minded hippies. However, I personally would like to add another reason, which is that the damn things are so difficult to pack up.
I often go away with the kids on my own, and I have noticed over the years that quite a lot of mums do the same thing. I have just enjoyed a couple of nights on the south Devon coast with my daughter. Nearby a mum was camping with her two young children in one of those pop-up tents beloved of festival-goers.
I was interested to witness her attempts to pack up with the hindrance of her toddler and a baby who had crawled off to chew on some grass. She worked hard and long to get the tent to fold up – trying this way, then that, bending it into contortions it was never designed to be bent into.
Eventually she managed to fold it into the required circle, but just then the baby headed off for pastures new – literally. Poor mum looked from the folded tent in her arms to the disappearing baby and with an anguished howl let it go, whereupon it promptly pinged back into shape.
It was at this point that I felt I should offer my services. It is possible you have been thinking that I should have done this earlier. However, it was 7am and I was in my jim-jams reading a Buddhism book on the benefits of loving humanity and living in the present moment. Slowly, it occurred to me the moment had come to show my love for this despairing human.
Mum grabbed baby and toddler and forcefully strapped them into the car, where they screamed in indignation. Then we both set to and wrestled with the tent for a long time, hampered by mum's stress levels and my concern that the dubious elasticity of my pyjamas would not long survive this dance around a campsite with a pop-up tent.
Once tamed it took as long to stuff the billowing folds of nylon into its absurdly snug-fitting bag. "I'll have to do it again back home," said mum sadly once it was in the boot of her car. "It's wet on the bottom." I gazed at her with empathy; her children were still screaming, she looked completely done in, a three-hour drive to the Midlands lay ahead of her and it was not yet 8am.
I vowed not to repeat the same procedure when I left and stuffed our tent in the back of the car to be dealt with once home. I have unsuccessfully tried seven times since to fold it so it goes back into the bag from whence it came.
It appears to me that tent manufacturers seem to me to be overly focused on compact and lightweight tents that can be transported and put up easily but less concerned with how they get put away. Why, for instance, do the sleeves they come in have to be quite so tight fitting?
They seem to be unaware that people may not be folding up tents in ideal conditions – that it might be windy and wet for instance, or a woman might be camping on her own with small children, or a hapless and hungover teenager could be trying to deal with a sodden, mud-encrusted mass of nylon and bendy poles.
I'm not up to the maths, but if 20,000 tents were left at Glastonbury in one year – what is the total for all the festivals in the UK every summer?
Call me a cynic, but replacement tents every festival season must be big business.
Oh, for that crystal ball."
(from https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/she-said/2014/jun/13/tens-of-thousands-of-tents-are-discarded-at-festivals-and-i-know-why)
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