It’s the last day of the festival. You’ve woken up groggy and hungover, you’re dehydrated and tired after sleeping (badly) in a field for four nights and your legs ache from traipsing around in the mud wearing wellies.
Under these conditions, it’s no surprise that the thought of packing away a half collapsing, barely waterproof tent is less than appealing – but festival organisers are urging attendees to stop take their tents home. If you don’t, your tent is essentially a single-use plastic and it’ll damage the planet.
The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), a membership body for 60 independent festivals including Boardmasters, Boomtown and Kendal Calling is calling on people to ‘take your tent home’ and ‘say no to single use’.
Your single-use tent may end up in landfill
The AIF said it wants to reduce the estimated 250,000 tents that are left at music festivals across the UK every year – most of which aren’t collected by charities and can’t be recycled, meaning they end up in landfill.
The average tent weighs 3.5kg and is mostly made of plastic – the equivalent of 8,750 straws or 250 pint cups, the AIF said. It is calling on retailers to stop effectively marketing the tents as single use by promoting them specifically for festival use and selling them cheap.
“We call upon major retailers to stop marketing and selling tents and other camping items as essentially single-use, and profiting from disposable culture,” AIF CEO Paul Reed said. “Festival audiences can take positive action and reduce their carbon footprint simply by taking their tent home and reusing it, ensuring that it doesn’t become a single-use item this summer.”