An article in (at? I'm never sure) Somerset Live contrasts the almost pristine state of the field after this year's festival with the amount of tents and rubbish left behind last year, and explains the difference thusly:
Climate change and the environment has been a central theme for this year's event, with organisers urging people to bring sturdy tents that they take home, and it appears that the message has been getting through.
The Love the Farm, Leave no Trace pledge, which launched in 2016, is believed to have resulted in an 81 per cent reduction in tents left at Glastonbury in 2017.
Nope.
Those pop-up tents are easy to pop up, but very fiddly to fold up and put back in the bag. If you are tired, cold, muddy and dying to go home and your tent is covered in mud (and possibly sewage), you won't be in the mood to struggle with it for ten minutes and are likely to abandon it. Having spent £200 on a ticket and £50 on travel, and having got used to paying £8 for a can of warm lager, who cares about the £40 you spent on a pop-up tent?
If, as happened this year, you and your tent are dry and the weather's still nice, you're happy to faff about for ten minutes, work out how to pack up your tent and take it with you.
The same goes for all the plastic rubbish. Most people won't be willing to gather up plastic bottles embedded in mud (and possibly sewage) while it's pouring down. If it's nice weather, filling up a recycling bag with loose plastic bottles is no great sacrifice, if you're doing it with a few like-minded, it could even be quite satisfying.
Let's see what happens to people's new-found environmental awareness next time it's been raining.
Debate Magazine
