A Greener Glastonbury?

From potato tent pegs to speed dating in the Greenpeace cafe, you couldn’t go more than 10 steps in your wellies at this year’s Glastonbury without being reminded of the ‘Love the farm, Leave no Trace’ motto. But did it work?

Leaving the site on the morning after the three nights before, Worthy Farm was strewn with tents, wellies, countless compostable beers cups and goodness knows what else, but first signs are that this year’s clear up went ‘fantastically well’ according to litter manager, Robert Kearle. With the help of 1,200 volunteers and 17,000 sorting bins, 95 per cent of the rubbish was cleared up by last weekend.

A lot less mud meant there were a lot less wellies left behind than in 2007, but still plenty of lost and abandoned tents, as green intentions and three day benders often don’t go hand-in-hand. Prepared for this, organisers partnered up with ECT Recycling to improve on 2005’s 50% recycling rate, and have the left over tents and wellies delivered to the ‘Frip Ethique’ project in Senegal for re-use, where 40 staff are employed under ethical working conditions to sort and bale second-hand clothing for onward sale to local market traders. ‘They won’t get shipped out and made into something else. They’ll be used by people in Africa to wear again, which is great,’ said festival founder Michael Eavis.

Other green steps included reducing the number of cars on site, with increasing numbers car-sharing or using the festival buses laid on by National Express and local groups, including the Brighton Peace and Environment Centre (BPEC), which ran some of its coaches on used vegetable oil.

The Greenfields were the hub of the eco-spirit, with solar showers, quite necessary if you were also indulging in the green dating or mass Greenpeace wedding, plenty of great veggie grub, green kids peddling huge, bizarre contraptions around the fields, and a place to chill out.

‘Leave No Trace’ is quite a message to get across to get across to nearly 175,000 people living in the moment but with the measures put in place, before and after the site was surged upon, it looks like the site will be restored for its usual four-legged residents quicker than previous years.

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