Eco warrior jewellery: Recycling crew at Glastonbury Festival

The festival site resembles a rubbish dump on Monday

Surface rubbish

I've been off grid for a while, travelling and working around Europe. Although not jewellery related I wanted to write about my experience this summer working as part of the recycling crew during and after Britain's largest music and performing arts festival, Glastonbury Festival. Set in the rural county of Somerset, the Festival employs large numbers of people in the recycling and the clean up operation. Over 150 000 people visit the festival during the week end. This represents the size of a large town in England and they consume and discard a large amount of "stuff" not always rubbish. I was quite shocked and saddened by the sight, I hadn't been to the festival for nearly 20 years and I can't recall it being in such a state at the end, it defiantly reflects the throw away mentality that exists now a days. The clean up operation can last for many weeks after the festival depending on the conditions, this year was not one of the easiest. As it was a very muddy festival and rubbish got buried in the mud which then dried and so the ground had to be ploughed up several times to bring drinks can, plastic bottles, large quantity of sun glasses and various array of lost and thrown away items to the surface. The fields of Worthy farm and the surrounding land on which the festival is held, need to be spotless so the herd of diary cows can return to graze in safety.

A few days into the clean up, the rubbish is bagged up.

A fleet of over 10 refuse lorries work for nearly 2 weeks taking the non recyclable rubbish to the land fill

                                                                 Glastonbury festival tries to encourage the public to do as much recycling on site as possible, by providing different recycling bins and handing out bin bags with " love the farm leave no trace" printed on them. The festival organisers aimed for 60% recycling this year, I don't know if that target was reached this year, an unconfirmed rumour was that over a million pounds was spent on land fill taxes. What ever the exact percentage of recycling Glastonbury Festival achieves, it does try to be as green as possible.
Below are a few examples of creative upcycling and recycling.


                                               The Mutoid Waste Co