Thousands of tents and acres of litter were dumped by campers as they left Reading Festival.
As many as 90,000 people flocked to the festival over the bank holiday weekend with performances from Stormzy and AJ Tracey, Liam Gallagher and rock band Biffy Clyro.
As the dust settled on its first event since 2019, drone footage at 5pm today showed the scale of the waste they left behind.
At least six fields were each littered with hundreds of abandoned tents, vast numbers of beer cans, bottles and unwanted clothes.
Similar pictures were captured at Reading’s slightly smaller sister festival in Leeds.
Every abandoned tent contains the equivalent of 9,000 plastic straws and requires 25kg of carbon dioxide to make – the same amount of pollution as a car driving 100 miles.
The festival’s sustainability manager Lily Robbins said clearing up ‘always takes time, because we want to do it properly’.
She told the BBC: ‘We take off as much as we can but unfortunately the rest does have to be taken off site to a recycling plant. That involves an incredibly lengthy process.
‘Unfortunately tents are one of the worst things to try and recycle’.
Clean Up Britain founder John Read said: ‘Leaving behind tents seems like self-indulgent, “first world” and lazy behaviour.
‘All of us must become more aware of the need to protect and cherish the environment. Dumping perfectly good tents runs contrary to this.
‘Festival organisers need to get more socially responsible too, and insist on festival goers taking tents home with them. Some sort of deposit return scheme is required, but they have been very slow to act on this.’
Reading and Leeds are known are rite-of-passage festivals for students celebrating exam results and an end of summer blowout.
The managing director of the group which runs the two festivals, Melvin Benn, previously said his aim had been to offer young people a chance to live ‘freely’ without having to think about Covid-19.
Festival Republic group have been contacted for comment.
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