Plastic Free Glastonbury

Source: The Guardian

Glastonbury. It is the UK’s biggest, busiest and best music festival. This year over 200,000 people attended, and Worthy Farm in Somerset once again became a small town of music lovers and party goers. But this year something different happened. The festival went plastic-free. It is estimated that this move will result in over a million plastic bottles being saved, a number which is large enough to get the seal of approval from Sir David Attenborough. Making a surprise appearance on the final day of the festival, the infamous naturalist made his festival debut on the pyramid stage to commend the festival for its efforts in reducing single-use plastic.

“Now this great festival has gone plastic-free,” he said. “That is more than a million bottles of water have not been drunk by you in plastic. Thank you! Thank you!

“The ocean covers two-thirds of this planet of ours … the land only covers one-third of the globe. There are seven great continents on which we human beings live. Each of them has its own marvelous creatures – birds and mammals, animals of all kinds. Each of them has its own glory, each of them has its own problems.”

As well as banning plastic bottles, Glastonbury has encouraged its festival-goers to make some more positive changes whilst they attend. Encouraging people to recycle, refrain from urinating on the ground, use only what you need (cut down on the amount of paper napkins, etc. used), take your tent home with you, use public transport to get to the festival, bring a reusable water bottle, and use water responsibly and efficiently. All of these things are being implemented in order to help protect the farm and surrounding waterways, and minimize further environmental and worldwide damage.

As well as encouraging the festival attendees themselves to implement changes, the festival itself has in a number of ways tried to reduce any negative impact on the planet. They have: Incentivised green travel, prioritised green energy by installing solar panels and reducing the number of diesel generators used on site, cut down on food miles, used water from reservoirs and on-site mains instead of it being transported in, only allowed compostable plates and cutlery, recycled as much waste as possible, only sold Fairtrade tea, coffee, hot chocolate and sugar on site, all glitter sold is biodegradable, and all bags and t-shirts sold are organic cotton which is unbleached and printed with water-based inks.

We are thoroughly impressed by the attempts of such a large event to really help to reduce its environmental impact and hope that this will urge similar festivals, events, and companies to also make positive changes in the name of saving our plane. Tag your favorite festivals below, big or small, and urge them to follow Glastonbury’s lead and go plastic-free too.

Daisy from Bags of Ethics^TM