Glastonbury 2019: festival bans plastic bottles

The world famous music festival will no longer sell single-use disposable plastic drinks bottles in bid to cut waste.

Refill not landfill: Glastonbury Festival to stop selling single-use plastic bottles

Single-use disposable plastic drinks bottles will be banned from sale at Glastonbury Festival for the first time this year. Nor will plastic bottles be supplied to musicians backstage, in dressing rooms or to production and catering staff, according to the music festival’s website. Organisers are encouraging festival-goers to use reusable bottles and refill them at taps around the Glastonbury site.

Glastonbury 2019: sale of single-use plastic bottles banned for first time

Glastonbury Festival is putting an end to single-use plastic bottles being sold at the music gathering for the first time.

The festival, first inaugurated in 1970, is taking place this summer from Wednesday 26 June until Sunday 30 June. 

However, this year the organisers have decided to take a stand against the detrimental impact of plastic pollution.

"With more than one million plastic bottles sold at Glastonbury in 2017, we feel that stopping their sale is the only way forward," a statement on the musical festival’s website reads.

According to the announcement, plastic bottles will also not be supplied backstage, in dressing rooms or to people working in production or catering.

Source: TheIndependent.co.uk

Glastonbury Festival Green Policies: for Festival Goers

For a few days in June, the farmland which plays host to Glastonbury Festival is transformed into a fully-functioning, makeshift city. 

The scale of the Festival is so vast that it is easy to forget that, for the rest of the year, the pastures, streams and woodlands are home to roaming herds of cows and thriving local wildlife.

For Glastonbury Festival to be sustainable, everyone has a duty to make sure the land on which it stands is looked after. 

With over 200,000 people visiting and working across the sprawling site, reducing the impact Glastonbury Festival has on its general environment is a huge task. And it is one which organisers are fiercely devoted to.

But they simply can’t do it without you. There are many ways in which you can help them to protect our environment and the future of the Festival.

• Please use the toilets provided. Urinating on the land or in the rivers contaminates the local water supply, killing wildlife and seriously compromises the future of the festival.
• Please use our recycling bins. It is not okay to drop litter on the ground. Help by placing your waste into the correct recycling bins.
• Please only use what you need. If every Festival-goer used four napkins instead of one, there would be an extra 450,000 napkins wasted unnecessarily.
• Take your tent and equipment home with you. Nothing should be considered disposable so please only bring equipment that is built to last.
• Please use public transport, cycle or car-share to Glastonbury Festival. Car exhaust is still the greatest contributor to global climate change. Join the 40 percent of Festival-goers that travel to the Festival by public transport and help to reduce our carbon footprint.
• Please bring a reusable water bottle. These can be filled for free at all of our taps and WaterAid kiosks across the Festival site.
• Please use water responsibly. Turn off taps and help us use water efficiently.
• Please do not bring in glass bottles or other prohibited items such as paper lanterns. They cause fires and harm the cattle that live on the land.

Beyond the farm

‘Our commitment to protect our environment – to use its resources responsibly and to reduce our ecological footprint – also extends beyond the physical boundaries of the Festival. Over the last few decades, we’ve donated millions of pounds to our partners at Greenpeace, Oxfam, and WaterAid, who all do invaluable work to meet the urgent needs of our planet. Those donations wouldn’t be possible without all of you who buy our tickets, and the support of the thousands of volunteers who give their time to these good causes at the Festival.’

Feel free to read through the energy, waste and ecological policies and learn how organisers are working towards a more sustainable future, and the vital role you can play in helping them to achieve it.

Love the Farm, leave no trace.

Source: GlastonburyFestivals.co.uk