Did Glasto beat the plastic?

The official Glastonbury website, back in February this year, informed attendees that no single-use plastic bottles would be available at the festival this year, and that was to include backstage, catering and even dressing rooms. The message on the website was, "leave this beautiful countryside in the state that it deserves."

To encourage the use of reusable water bottles, 850 refill taps were to be available, additional Water Aid stations, as well as free tap water refills at all onsite bars.

If you go back to the previous festival in 2017, they processed a staggering 45 tonnes of aluminium cans onsite at the end of the weekend! And with vendors now going to be selling more canned soft drinks, this volume is expected to be much higher for 2019. But the ban on single-use bottles should lead to a significant reduction in plastic recycling, from the 40 tonnes they got through two years ago, when figures are known.

It's also worth noting that there was only wooden cutlery for food, paper plates, and even biodegradable confetti for the big bang stage effects! And to top it off, Sir David Attenborough appeared on the Pyramid Stage to reinforce the no plastic message, pointing out that one million fewer plastic bottles would be in circulation because of the site ban.

(Clean up begins - photo: Press Association)

Lucy Wagstaffe, reporting for Euronews, attended the weekend, and said that while the message was good, there was up to a 30 minute wait to get your free water refill, despite their being around 850 taps to choose from. Initial reports indicated that many more had heeded the request to take away tents, although an early figure of over 99% removal rate, has since been downgraded to more like 93% - either way this shows a drastic improvement on two years ago.

While there was a ban on plastics being sold inside, there were no moves to stop people bringing their own plastic in, and unfortunately many tonnes of the stuff still came in and was inextricably strewn across the massive site, despite an abundance of bins (around 15,000) and a recycling centre.

Now, a week after the festival ended, a clean-up crew of over 1,000 volunteers is well on the way to getting the site back to shape and ready to receive it's more normal clientele - cows. But it is expected that the full transformation may take up to six weeks in total, as they wade through mountains of discarded camping chairs, inflatable mattresses and flip flops!

It also turned out that the onsite Co-op store didn't get the eco-message for the weekend. They were still selling plenty of items in non-recyclable packaging. But overall, the BBC reported from the onsite recycling team, that they had confirmed 'a massive reduction in the amount of plastic on the site this year - the least ever seen, by a distance.'

Many news sites and papers were quick to jump on the before and after with the plastic story, and point out that despite the strong message from festival organisers, the mess was the same as ever and that this, somehow, ruined the festivals environmental message.

Fullfact.Org looked into this, and found that many of the post-festival litter strewn photos that have been shared in the last week or so on social media and the press, are in fact old ones. One common one they saw, was actually a Press Association photo from the 2015 festival. It has been pointed out that most of the big festivals now, use similar clean-up systems, and indeed there have been many other non-music events in recent years that also produce high levels of litter - Royal Ascot and the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge being mentioned, amongst others.

The final word goes to helper, Gillian Hodgson, talking to Somerset Live, who said that, "I picked up litter last year too, and there was far less this time around. People really made an effort this year.... The only things in our non-recyclable waste bags was the odd crisp packet and loads of fag ends. Dropping fag ends is the thing we would like people to stop doing. There were thousands of them on the ground each morning."  

From:
BBC News
Euronews.com
SomersetLive.co.uk
Glastonburyfestival.co.uk
EnergyLiveNews.com