George Seton: What happens to all those tents left at festivals?

We've seen the photos and videos on social media going viral every year, showing the mountains of rubbish that have to be dealt with after every new year's festival.

Tents that got hit by the weather, covered in mud, with festival-goers who just don't want to deal with packing it back in their cars. 

But the clean up still has to be done, so what happens to all the rubbish left behind? 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
All right, I've seen the photographs of what happens after
festivals these days and it's really quite shocking. You'll see
it everywhere on all the social media mountains of rubbish
and the main thing is that the kids leave they're
tents behind. Of course, you get tense that a hit
by the weather, nobody wants those You got tents covered
with maud. You've got festival goers though, mostly who just
do not want to deal with packing it back in

(00:37):
the car. But the cleanup still has to be done,
and so what happens to all the rubbish left behind?
So a fellow called George Seaton is part of the
Big Old Cleanup team. He runs clean events in z
and joins her Now, Happy New Year, George. Can hear
you the videos I've seen? Because I haven't been to
a festival for a while, you know, but the videos

(00:58):
I've seen the place is a mess and there are
tents everywhere. How bad is it?

Speaker 3 (01:04):
It can be pretty bad. It depends on partly depends
on the weather as well as well as the tential crowd.
So when we do get some bed bed rain, I
guess the tents of camp toquipment tend to get a
bit muddy as well as the probably the punters to

(01:24):
probably have have had enough of the mud by the
by the end of the festival and aren't too interested
in packing up this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay, we'll see. The problem, I think is that you
can buy a ten for thirty five bucks of these
days and the kids go, oh, we need a tent
for the festival. They buy a tent from the warehouse,
they go there, they live in it, they copen it.
At the end of the day they go do we
need this? No, they don't, and then they just walk away,
which is hilarious when you consider that the young people
who are always telling us to be tidy keiwigs and

(01:51):
to clean up the environment. It is that a true theory?

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh absolutely, I mean, I mean part of the problem
is that is just the cheap campaig year available ones
really only designed for a single use, to be honest.
So yeah, you know, I mean, you see that the
majority of the good quality tents, they'll go go home.
It's the it's the cheap stuff that that people have
just bought purely for the festival. And you can get
these these tents for as little as thirty dollars, you know,

(02:19):
and and they're even advertised as festival tenths sometimes. So yeah,
that's that's probably you know, actually one of the sort
of big big factors in it causes.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
So your teams go in and you clean it up,
and where does the rubbish go.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
I mean, we do what we can to to salvage
as much as possible. We have. We've got community groups
that come through. We've got got green teams on some
festivals that will that will go through and and salvage
all the all the good stuff they can get, and
those go to the community groups or or charities or
any anywhere that we can we can take them.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
And and festivals also the moment sort of doing a
decent job of providing rented tent and those sort of options.
But yeah, the reality is a thought your sort of
lift over staff that it pretty much goes to landfill.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
All right, George, I'm so sorry, but I do thank
you for your time and your efforts in cleaning up
New Zealand. And I have to say to the kids,
if you're going to a festival and you've got it
your tea, take it away.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
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