Festivals move to ban disposable tents

More than 60 independent UK festivals are coming together to fight against the sale of disposable festival tents sold for single-use.

It's believed that somewhere around 250,000 tents are abandoned at festivals in the UK every year, and many ultimately end up in landfill as they cannot be recycled or re-used by charities adding to the huge amounts of plastic waste that arise from festivals each year.

The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) is leading the charge against the single-use tents and also calling upon festivalgoers to take their tents home with them at the end of festivals. 

"We call upon major retailers to stop marketing and selling tents and other camping items as essentially single-use, and profiting from disposable culture," the AIF's CEO Paul Reed said. "AIF launches this campaign to raise awareness and highlight abandoned tents as part of the single-use plastics problem.

"The message here is not to buy a more expensive tent - with a single tent carrying the same amount of plastic as more than 8,700 plastic straws, festival audiences can take positive action and reduce their carbon footprint simply by taking their tent home and reusing it, ensuring that it doesn’t become a single-use item this summer."

For more, read our investigation on whether dance music is destroying the environment.

DJs for Climate Action revealed a new compilation and party series for 2019 back in March.