‘Festival Tent’ Doesn’t Mean Single Use!
After seeing an article released by the BBC we thought we would write a little article about ‘Festival Tents’.
All of the tents that we sell on our site are not intended for single use, they are all made to be used on multiple occasions if used correctly.
Here at One Stop Festival we have been supporting the Love Your Tent campaign for more than 6 years. Love Your Tent is the international waste campaign designed to bond people with their portable homes, and encourage them to re-use instead of discard.
All of our tents are competitively priced and are manufactured to last more than one use meaning they can be used for the whole festival season.
Some of the statistics are absolutely frightening with an estimated 250,000 tents left at festivals each year.
The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) says the average tent is mostly made of plastic – which is equivalent to 8,750 straws or 250 pint cups. To put that into perspective 250,000 tents is the equivalent to 62,500,000 pint cups that is a scary amount of rubbish! Due to these worrying statistics 60 independent UK festivals have already committed to getting rid of single-use plastic at their events by 2021.
Some festivals have started to take a near zero tolerance approach when it comes to abandoning tents at the end of the weekend. For example Boomtown plans to create a zero waste space with people on hand to help the people attending the festival to keep the site clean. Emily Ford the festivals sustainability officer said “If people aren’t living up to our ethos there’ll be a warning system and if people breach it, we may ask them to leave the Eco Camp.”
Hopefully more festivals that are the size of Boomtown will take the same approach to people leaving there tents behind because even though people are there to have a good time and we understand that come the end of the weekend the last thing you will want to do is pack up your tent that cost you £20 and many people who leave there tents at the weekend think that charities are going to come and take them but that is not the case.
Leaving your tent at a festival is having a knock on affect on the environment i know it doesn’t sound like a big deal but it really is and it’s only getting worse, that is why something has to be done about it now otherwise in years to come there might be increased ticket rates due to the impact that leaving your rubbish and tents at the festival has on the environment.