Just to revive this a little, in the hope that it might change a little this year.
I used to work as crew at many of the largest UK festivals and would arrive on site a week or two before kickoff and leave a week after shutdown.
The contractors given the job of clearing the site eg. Glastonbury, would, along with some random helpers and a troop of Scouts, have to check and mark every tent and sleeping bag that was left on site. I personally used to bring back several tents, bags, cooking gear....name it, with me from festivals to donate to a guy in Brighton who had taken a personal interest in helping homeless people. Make no mistake, after the Scouts etc had taken what was possible to take in the couple of hours before contractors would drive through with dozers and lorries, there were still hundred, if not thousands of fly-tipped tents and many of them weren’t cheapo Argos gear either.
With all the best will in the World, it was on many occasions a matter of life and death. I cannot count the number of drugged and unconscious casualties I found who had been abandoned in their tents and were either dangerously hypothermic, hallucinating, in a seriously deteriorated condition... you don’t want those tents... my point being that there isn’t enough time or effort put into removing fly-tipped stuff from festival sites, because what was left went to landfill and it all costs money to clear. It may well be the case that some policy has been brought in regarding this matter but treating the symptom and not the cause is the real issue. It’s an attitude problem.
If you spoke to the organisers of any large festival, they will probably not give you permission to be on site after shutdown due to the heavy machinery that’s charging about and the need to clear sites quickly. So you’ll need to approach them with this idea and a very comprehensive outline of exactly how you intend to not delay them but to help them. Consider the infrastucture you’ll need in order to disassemble and pack only five hundred complete and good quality tents, bags, mats, cookers, inflatable beds, quilts...etc , in just a couple of hours and while it’s raining stair-rods in a gale. Been there, done that, no thanks.
With all the best intentions, you will find that very difficult and problematic because for each unconscious casualty you find while looking for eg.tent pegs, you then have the responsibility to take them to first aid/ st john’s, who will already be totally frazzled from the hundreds of walking wounded, psychotic and ketamined hallucinators that they have been dealing with since the moment the gates first opened three days ago. That could easily take an hour per person, if you’re lucky!
I admire anyone’s effort but look at it from a business perspective and argue from that point or you’ll be treated like well-meaning but unrealistic hopefuls and not as professionals.
Best wishes,
Darryl
