r/Wellthatsucks • u/mattloaf666 • 9h ago

Reading festival 2026

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12.6k Upvotes

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3.3k

u/crowhouse 8h ago

Why do so many people abandon tents?

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u/Adventurous_Emotion9 8h ago

There’s a belief that the tents left behind are taken by charities and given to homeless or those who need them. This has been debunked by organisers time and time again as not being true.

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u/Ancient-Emu-8293 8h ago

Would be pretty convenient to pretend believing that.

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u/aardvarkbjones 8h ago

Is it? Tents cost money. 

Seems insanely wasteful, both environmentally and fiscally.

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u/NoForever3645 7h ago

Let’s be honest, festival goers aren’t exactly known for being fiscally or environmentally responsible.

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u/halosos 7h ago

Shit I need to go visit the aftermath of one for a free tent

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u/your_red_triangle 5h ago

enjoy the free piss and shit that comes with it, that's one of the reasons people abandoned them. Went years ago, our neighbours would get out in the middle of the night and just piss anywhere they felt like it.

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u/Fergnasty007 3h ago

I have been to over 50 camping festivals in the US in the past 15 years and this is not even close to the norm.

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u/Sailed_Sea 2h ago

camping festivals in the uk tend to be very different from those in the us, usually more alcohol and other drugs.

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u/Front-Bookkeeper2139 46m ago

And way more fun

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u/ImmortalMoron3 2h ago

Well Reading is in the UK sooo...

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u/eggs_mcmuffin 2h ago

inside the tent or outside? because most grass has piss on it at this point in history lol

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u/mark_b 5h ago

Even if the other two replies weren't true (they are), the tents that get left behind aren't good tents, they're £20 tents off Amazon.

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u/SexlexiaSufferer 5h ago

Don’t hit it with a black light

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u/After-Barracuda-9689 7h ago

I used to go to festivals in the early 2000s and never experienced anything like this. Maybe it was the festivals I was attending, but everyone packed their stuff out. I’m sure there were some thing left behind, but nothing like this scale.

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u/Glittering_End_6864 6h ago

Yeah, this is crazy. I have never seen a festival with this much garbage left on the ground like this.

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u/BarbaraBeans 6h ago

I'm just talking out my ass here but this seems like TikTok/IG behavior. People who go to festivals to snap a few pics for social media.

I go to a few different music fests and there is absolutely no littering occurring at all.

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u/SecondaryWombat 5h ago

Leave No Trace festivals are the norm for me, some smashed grass and a couple tire ruts are all that get left behind.

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u/SymbolUnderTheCaret 2h ago

same here

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u/SecondaryWombat 2h ago

Even the idea of seeing that level of trash at a festival is like looking out my window and seeing an alien spacecraft in my yard.

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u/SymbolUnderTheCaret 2h ago

yep. last event I went to, there was a large tent peg that had got stuck in a tree root. Someone spent hours struggling with it rather than leave it behind.

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u/justme002 5h ago

In 1969, cleanup after Woodstock required $50,000 and buldozers.

Edit: in today's money that's in excess of $450,000

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u/NZRedditUser 5h ago

Maybe you left early or yea was the size of event. Overnight events where tents are common you cant have a clean place cause at night people just chuck shit around, and whe people see mess it adds up

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u/After-Barracuda-9689 4h ago

Yeah, I think it was the festivals I attended. I no longer enjoy that kind of thing, but I wouldn’t be shocked if those same festivals are still nothing like this.

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u/Aksi_Gu 4h ago

Yeah I was at reading in 2003 and it looked like this.

Maybe not on the scale, but there's always been shitheads

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u/StinkyWeezle 4h ago

You couldn't pick up a new tent for 10% of the ticket price back then.

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u/GermanRedditorAmA 7h ago

Depends a lot on the festival, but any that has high alcohol consumption will probably check this.

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u/Dorny_Hude 7h ago

You’d assume a Reading Festival is lot tamer than almost any other and people there are somewhat knowledgeable.

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u/Mountain-Discount161 7h ago

Reading Festival

Just so we're clear. This isn't "a" reading festival. This is a festival named after the town Reading in England.

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u/Standard_Gur30 6h ago

Are you sure? This looks like the morning after a large book club to me. 🤣

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u/IAmANobodyAMA 7h ago

It can be both 🤣

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u/Alarmed-Newspaper994 7h ago

As a Reading Festival veteran from my younger years, it's one of the more chaotic ones. Young crowd, lots of nutters. I've been to plenty of festivals since that are very civilised overall, and I suspect with minimal (comparatively) rubbish left behind. There will of course always be some.

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u/icansmellcolors 6h ago

But they have been known to claim to be fiscally and environmentally responsible.

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u/KwisatzHaterach 7h ago

As a festival goer I resent this, at the same time I must acknowledge the veracity of part of the statement for I’m a financial chaos demon.

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u/RockstarAgent 7h ago

The fact is that if you can afford to go to an event like this, you can afford to leave a tent behind and not deal with it. So it’s a matter of convenience.

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u/Dumbwaiter819 3h ago

"Let’s be honest, festival goers aren’t exactly known for being fiscally or environmentally responsible."

This is tragically hilarious when you remember a lot of people who attend things like this claim to be all "pro-earth" because they use reusable grocery bags and are against seed oils or whatever the fuck social media is pumping into people's heads these days

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u/Most-Hawk-4175 7h ago

No, many tents are dirt cheap. They are just using the excuse that the tents are used as charity so they don't have to dismantle, pack up abd haul off their tent. They are just being gross and lazy.

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u/Iwantmoretime 4h ago

Yeah, even if the charity thing was true, pack it up and drop it off in a collection area. This is 100% making stuff up to justify pure lazyness. Pretty disgusting.

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u/PrintShinji 1h ago

A festival I visited a couple of weeks ago 100% encouraged this. If you had anything useful you should just drop it off at their "zero waste points" and it would go to charity (homeless work/ukraine/refugees). Things like canned food, tents, pots and pans, airbeds were all very much wanted.

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u/chickenMcSlugdicks 7h ago

Checking Amazon, definitely options for about $40. People absolutely just leave them as they see that $40 as an acceptable loss, especially after the inside is dirty, the outside is still wet from dew when they're packing to leave, aaand the hangover from a few days of festival life. Environmentally, I got nothing. I feel bad for the volunteers who spend time picking all this mess up.

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u/fickle_tartan 6h ago

Most summers you can get a cheap crappy tent as low as like $20-30 here in the UK, they'll be poor quality as well which makes people feel even better about dumping them afterwards.

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u/gsfgf 3h ago

Ah, that definitely would make a difference. Most people in the US use Walmart or Coleman tents, which are good tents.

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u/MokitFall 7h ago

Right? Especially those big ones. I think I've found my next side hustle.

Come on down to my new and slightly used tent store !

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u/AdventurousAbility30 6h ago

I recently stayed at a hotel that was filled with wedding guests that had a camping night as part of the 3 day wedding, and I got so many tents it paid for my new Blackstone flat top & grill lol.

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u/flatgreyrust 4h ago

how did you sell them?

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u/Snuzzlebuns 4h ago

I've been going to festivals since 2002. As a broke kid, I got a bunch of cool equipment for free like that. But when my tent was on its way out in the late 2010s, I "shopped" for a new one for several years, I would say I searched at about ten festivals. Couldn't find one I would have taken. They were all either broken in some way, or the super cheap garbage type.

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u/Leading-Let-5632 7h ago

They're dirt cheap, especially around festival time. You get a pop-up for like £15.

Cheaper than the food and drink you will consume that weekend

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u/Not-24_7Bantz 7h ago

Also most of them dont fold back up too well😂 no one wants to wrestle with it on Monday morning after a 3 day bender. You just want to go home 🤣

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u/UMACTUALLYITS23 7h ago

It's cheaper to buy a tent and then abandon it while getting to stay at the event then it would be to get accommodations and pay for transportation to and from.

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u/whatsuperpowers 7h ago

Of course it's cheaper to stay on the grounds, but it's still a loss if you don't take the tent you paid for.

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u/Koffeeboy 7h ago edited 7h ago

I bet a fair amount of people fly in. They get there without a tent, purchase the cheapest one they can find and then leave it behind. Why would they want to try and repack and pay to check a filthy, cheap, potentially damaged tent that they have no intention of reusing. it's a symptom of a disposable lifestyle.

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u/Aiken_Drumn 6h ago

It's all UK teens. Noone is flying to this

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u/Sovarius 5h ago

Yes exactly. I think a lot of people in this thread do not realize tents are as cheap as $20-$35.

$35 is a lot for some people. I would not leave trash/tents behind, but you bet i'm not wasting a couple hours + energy for $35 at the end of a long weekend.

I got to Magic (card game) events and ditch free stuff i get thats too large to fly with. What am i gonna do, stress myself so i can sell a $20 box i don't want? That's a freebie for someone else or i trash it

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u/Throwawayyyygold 5h ago

Same thing happens on Catalina Island. I did get a $200 REI sleeping pad that has a pin prick sized leak that I was able to fix when I got home. The tents that were abandoned were abandoned because they were crappy. We did use the ground covers as extra shade at our campsite.

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u/IDoStuff100 6h ago

Yeah, exactly this. You can get a tent for less than 50 bucks at any Walmart. A small additional cost for what they're already paying to attend

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u/Uncle-Cake 7h ago edited 7h ago

If you stay in a hotel, you don't get to take the hotel room home. And a tent is WAY cheaper.

They probably spend more on alcohol and drugs, and they don't get to take those home either. Call it a rental. If you're spending hundreds of dollars or more already, the cost of a tent is peanuts.

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u/Alarmed-Newspaper994 7h ago

This is really stupid logic though. If they take it home, it still costs the same... they just don't have to buy another one for the next festival. What point are you arguing for?

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u/Coolflip 7h ago

Many people fly to festivals, it's not necessarily free to take it home.

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u/Chance_Golf1795 7h ago

Not the in the UK they don't. I'd put that figure at minute percentages. In the US, maybe. But folks in the UK will train, bus, or drive.

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u/bbreddit0011 7h ago

This sentence makes no sense. Cleaning up after yourself is free. Don’t mask irresponsibility behind some imagined cost benefit of being a total dickhead to the organizers of the event and to the environment itself.

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u/bobbadouche 6h ago

Their comment makes total sense. You're reading something into it.

It's the thought process of a lazy person. Their comment doesn't preclude that the festival goer is irresponsible. They're flying in, buying something disposable, and then leaving the site and making someone else clean up after them.

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u/Abject-Expression548 7h ago

in my day, 2008 ish, and I guess its still the same, a large number of festival goers arrived by train, and its a decent walk from the station to the festival site. by monday morning everyone is knackered/hungover/still drunk/high so tents get left

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u/xmgutier 7h ago

Honestly if I was super hungover from a multi-day bender, I'd probably think it'd be pretty well worth tossing it instead of trying to pack it up into the stupid bag that never seems big enough to fit it again.

Not to mention that cost is probably split amongst friends and if one of them wants to keep it they can pack it up and pay the checked bag fee to bring it back home.

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u/-BluBone- 7h ago

If you can afford $1k for a ticket you can afford to leave behind an $80 tent.

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u/PutUrPawzUp 7h ago

Typically the sorts of people who can go to festivals are already affluent and don’t necessarily understand the value of money.

It is not a reach to assume most of the attendees got in on their parents dime.

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u/Tall-Ad6328 7h ago

That is a wild generalization. Lots of people spend hard earned money in those experiences because some of them are absolutely worth it. Sorry if you have no passion

But where I'm from, you leave the field how you found it and that involves taking out your own trash.

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u/edbuckley 7h ago

That's a stupid generalisation, you've got absolutely no evidence to back that up, because there isn't any.

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u/Cheap_Employ64 8h ago

I totally second this

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u/Dumbwaiter819 3h ago

Agreed. Strikes me more as "I don't want to be responsible for my own shit."

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u/ChanglingBlake 8h ago

Even if true, there would be a designated drop off where you can leave your collapsed and stored tent.

Entitled pricks will believe anything to avoid anything even beginning to appear as an inconvenience.

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u/notreading-scanning 6h ago

Question, how many of these festival goers are not entitled pricks?

I ask because with the exception of a few, most fair goers I have met seem to be looking for an excuse to get high, drunk while listening to music.

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u/Downtown-Pianist-449 6h ago

Wanting to get high and drunk at a festival does not make you an entitled prick. 

Abandoning gear and leaving waste strewn about with zero personal responsibility does. 

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u/ijmy3 8h ago

The problem is, that excuse used to wash. Now almost everyone knows it's not true.

People are just lazy. The issue here is that you can get tents dirt cheap nowadays from Amazon, temu etc. and there's no reason for these people not to just leave them to save carrying them back to the car. It's not exclusive to reading, it happens at most festivals sadly.

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u/tfhermobwoayway 8h ago

The problem is that, for most of human history, it was hard to make things and easy to destroy them. But we’ve suddenly ended up in a world where it’s easy to make things and hard to destroy them. Combine that with the mindset of the previous world, and the fact 8 billion people all want their own personal everything, and we end up with a bunch of people literally going through multiple tents a year. And all of that just piles up.

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u/VividFiddlesticks 4h ago

a bunch of people literally going through multiple tents a year

This seems so crazy to me. We've owned the same 2 tents (big one for people/sleeping, small one for storing crap out of the rain/sun) since the 90's. They're a little tired and have a couple patches now but both are fully functional and packed full of memories! We have the set up and take down for those tents down to a science. It's really only a pain when we have to pack it up wet and then set it back up at home to dry, but...that's just part of camping. (We don't do festivals, we're more "chill out in the woods" types)

I'm pretty damn lazy but abandoning tents like this is wild to me. (Old woman shakes fist at cloud)

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u/BoozeAmuze 4h ago

Same girl. Same. 

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u/synalgo_12 3h ago

I bought a tent in 2016, still in perfect condition after countless festivals, camping and some bushcraft weekends. I love that thing

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u/Obelisko78 8h ago edited 3h ago

Sorry to say, but it is all now a disposable world being disposed of.

It's not as if planned obsolescence was guaranteed to become the prevalent paradigm, but, homo sapien nature being what it is, the probability was high for it to become so

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u/ijmy3 8h ago

Oh absolutely. And the bottom line is, when it's Monday morning, you've had a 3/4/5 day bender and you feel horrific the last thing you want to do it pack up a clunky tent that almost NEVER fits back in it's bag and is heavy.

But most people these days would rather point the finger at "younger generations", or a "different" demographic to themselves than just admit that so many people cause this issue, and it extends beyond just festivals.

Unfortunately it seems to be somewhat ingrained in human nature to be lazy for some people, and in most cases if people were publicly shamed for it, they'd pack the tent. It's mostly the attitudes that you can anonymously dump a tent, and "everyone else is doing it anyway so why shouldn't I?" that cause this

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u/Leading-Let-5632 7h ago

Also the just general amount of rubbish that's just EVERYWHERE. It's of course down to the people dropping it, but the access to bins is nearly non-existant at most camps.

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u/Realistic_Way_4565 8h ago

True, you spend more on a hotel and also leave with nothing.

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u/BurningPenguin 8h ago

I had to look it up. Apparently the cheapest tent i can find in German Amazon is 20€. That's cheap af. But still, i can't stop and think that that's ~3-4 days of food for me alone.

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u/JoeFTPgamerIOS 8h ago

Happened in my state recently. I ran into someone that went to an event and they said how they tried to upgraded their own tent when they saw so many abandoned but they were all cheap and most already damaged. They got one decent usable tent out of the dozens left.

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u/intentionallybad 6h ago

I could completely see that if a tent got damaged, people would be more likely to abandon it. Especially if it was cheap to begin with.

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u/BWWFC 7h ago

dirt cheap nowadays

this is the nexus of so much wtf anymore

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u/lapsedPacifist5 8h ago

No, people are just lazy trashy twats do they give the used condoms, empty beer bottles and other trash to the homeless too? 

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u/ImportantIron1492 8h ago

Some festivals have a scheme but it requires people to actually make the effort to pack up their tents and drop them off at a designated spot. Not just abandon them...

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u/Natural-Break-2734 8h ago

They just paid 20 bucks for it and don’t want to spend time folding them whilst on 5 days no sleep come down

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u/Lionheartedshmoozer 8h ago

Even if this were true, you should disassemble it, and pack it up. I wonder how these people convince themselves they are not trash.

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u/IndependentLog6441 6h ago

It's unlikely this is the first trashy thing they've done...

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u/AdhesivenessStill688 8h ago

Sounds like someone made that up to excuse their laziness

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u/NeSToR_49 8h ago

So they think the organisers hire people to pack up the leftover tents for them?

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u/ginger_and_egg 8h ago

I think they think charity volunteers do it. But they don't think too hard about how insane that idea is

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u/MsMo999 7h ago

As someone who attends many camp festivals and have camped next to assholes - they know it will have to be cleaned up and thrown out but after 3-4 days of camping they just don’t give AF

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u/Leading-Let-5632 7h ago

I mean they do actuallt do that, just they don't keep them, just get burned with everything else

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u/BulgogiDude 7h ago

No one is thinking that their tent will be picked up for charity. They are just lazy and don’t want to spend 1 hour to clean up after themselves.

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u/[deleted] 8h ago edited 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/lekkerwhore 8h ago

If these people actually cared they could and would break the tent down themselves and give it to a charity. These people dont care, they just want to be lazy and trick themselves into pretending it's okay and for a good reason.

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u/flanmagnet 8h ago

Even if this was true, they could have deposit banks where the people could pack down their tents and leave them on the way out.

Just sheer bloody laziness and so incredibly wasteful.

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u/Downtown_Let 8h ago

Or a tent deposit with security at entry. You get a receipt and a numbered sticker on your tent, and only get your money back when you leave with your packed up tent. It's so wasteful.

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u/bullettenboss 8h ago

Entitlement

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u/pschlick 8h ago

All the comments below yours making it other people’s problem because of the “hassle”. Fucking entitled twats

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u/GallusWrangler 8h ago

This is most people unfortunately. Just observe a grocery store parking lot and their behavior with the carts.

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u/tfhermobwoayway 8h ago

This and the shopping trolley problem prove that people only do good things if they think they’ll be judged. Take away that judgement and their true colours shine through.

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u/Simple_Device5226 8h ago

The shopping cart is honestly the perfect example of this. Minimal effort required, yet people still choose to make their laziness someone else’s problem

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u/PBXbox 7h ago

Weep-woop skeedily-weep wheep woop that's not where the tents go!

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u/oskarinmix 8h ago

yeah my friend bailed last minute on a reading fest once too

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u/thecementmixer 8h ago

Lotsa scumbags in comments here supporting this trashy behavior wow.

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u/WinterTourist25 2h ago

We live in an era where many people now think that their problem is someone else's problem.

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u/t0talnonsense 8h ago

That’s literally not what’s happening. At all. OC asked a question. Other people answered the why. Just because I can understand the thought process behind someone being an jerk, that doesn’t make me a jerk or mean I agree with the behavior.

Are murder mystery writers inherently murderers because they can write from inside the head of one? No. Because we recognize the difference between understanding something/someone and agreeing with them.

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u/bagolaburgernesss 8h ago

Jessica Fletcher seems like one!

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u/vinyljunkie1245 3h ago

Between Jessica Fletcher and Miss Marple I can't work out which one is the more prolific serial killer. There's no way that every place they travel to just happens to have a murder that they conveniently frame someone for solve

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u/ivancea 8h ago

Untentment

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u/Crafter757031 8h ago

Ententlement

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u/redunculuspanda 8h ago

Cheap tents, The insane rain and mud after a weekend of music, drink and drugs.

Lots of people just think fuck it and go home.

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u/AliJDB 3h ago

There's also a bit of a final-night tradition that you drink the rest of the alcohol you have and go feral, slashing, burning holes in, or otherwise destroying each other's tents.

But also, they're cheap tents that probably leaked all weekend, they probably have no real intention of camping again anytime soon.

It's shit, but it's been that way forever.

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u/drLoveF 3h ago

Is there anyway to opt out of getting your shit destroyed?

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u/xChoke1x 8h ago

Because they’re lazy assholes that use the excuse “it’ll just be given to someone that needs it.”

It isn’t. Someone else has to pick that shit up.

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u/Few_Poetry5191 8h ago

This is what annoys me most. They’re not donating anything. They’re dumping it and hoping someone else sorts it out

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u/punch912 8h ago

Pos and garbage people.

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u/List-Beneficial 3h ago

Which is most. Look how many.

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u/herb28g 8h ago

Parents who are constantly clearing up their kids' clutter were not invited.

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u/mckenner1122 7h ago

It goes like this…

“Ugh Becky… I do not want to deal with this filthy ass gross tent. And I am SO hungoverrrrrrrrr….”

“Duhhhh Emily! You don’t even have to! Just fucking LEAVE IT!”

“Ew! But that’s like… literally littering or some shit?” :: kicks at a broken tent peg ::

“Look, I seen on Reddit or something that some group like comes around and picks them up and gives them away to like… idk the homeless or whatever. So if you leave it? You’re actually a good person. Okay? So let’s just GO already. And leave your gross ass dirt yurt.”

“Ohh! That’s so amazing. 🤩 I’m helping. Yay!”

(And none of that is true - they just get thrown away. Huzzah.)

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u/Axman5055 7h ago

Class of 09 vibes

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u/EjaculatingAracnids 3h ago

Me and the wife did what we thought was cocaine with a guy we thought was Post Malone(not really, but he looked like him and i kept calling him that) and decided to totally bail on the second day of a 3 day music festival. Didnt really break our tent and canopy down, just chucked it in the back of the car and bounced. Kinda fucked up, tired, sun burnt and dehydrated, we still managed to clean up after ourselves and leave a beer for the neighbor.

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u/british_bbc_ 8h ago

They don't give a fuck

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u/Stomach-Green 8h ago

Consumerism

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u/simsyboy 8h ago

Because they're scum. And there are a very large majority of scumbags who go to reading festival.

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u/JaysonTatumPullUp 8h ago

This happens at every festival

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u/simsyboy 8h ago

By scumbags.

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u/Actual-Wave-1959 7h ago

It doesn't 

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u/SousVideDiaper 7h ago

Not really, I've been to several that had clean grounds afterwards, despite people partying hard

I think there's a possible connection between the type of music and the type of people who attend. By and large, country music festival attendees seem to be the worst offenders of leaving trash

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u/greenvahn 7h ago

Not really. There a few festivals where it happens but this is not the normal behaviour at "every" festival.

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u/Low_ridah 8h ago

Probably because they are full of unpleasant juices

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u/Internal-Plantain-56 6h ago

This right here.

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u/Snafu999 8h ago

When you're spending £325 for a weekend, (probably £500+ including food and drink) a £30 tent starts looking disposable

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u/S3erverMonkey 8h ago

Leaving behind your trash is entitled and lazy behavior. Grow the fuck up.

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u/anotherblog 8h ago

It disgusts me. I was a regular festival goer in the early 2000s, including Leeds/Reading. I would never have even considered leaving my shit behind, however young, tired and hungover I was. It’s shameful. When my kids are a bit older I’ll have no problems with them going, but I’ll definitely be checking out and checking back in ALL their kit.

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u/S3erverMonkey 8h ago

Teaching your kids to be responsible, hell yeah.

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u/VoluntaryJetsFan 7h ago

That’s not what he’s saying is it you freak

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u/DeapVally 5h ago

They will, eventually. Hopefully. When they get to university. But this festival is bloody full of teenagers. Hence....

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u/S3erverMonkey 5h ago

Raise your kids better. I learned to pack our what I packed in when I was still single digits.

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u/Bongressman 8h ago

Right? I spotted a couple I'd gladly take home for free.

I weep for our landfills.

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u/Dapper_Recognition50 8h ago

Because their parents bought them.

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u/tfhermobwoayway 8h ago

Because they know someone else will clean it up for them. They see the good, conscientious people who go around picking up all the litter as idiot suckers who save them a job. That’s how all litterers think.

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u/Zr0w3n00 8h ago

The majority of people who go to festivals are rich kids who’ve parents have paid for their tickets and all their equipment. They don’t go camping normally, at least not in a tent that doesn’t have 25 square meters of space. So they don’t need to take it with. As their rich kids they’re also entitled, so they think the troglodytes (their words, not mine) who work the festival and own the land should clean up after them.

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u/Sixsignsofalex94 7h ago

Tents are fairly cheap, many are wet and damaged, folks don’t want to carry around a wet muddy tent that didn’t cost that much in the grand scheme, and then on top of that many fill them with their rubbish so they see the tent as a sort of bin lol

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u/Euphoric_planter_328 7h ago

And none of that is anyone’s problem but the person who decided to utilize a tent.

Truly all those people are scum of the earth. Shows em exactly the type of person you are.

There should be someone at the edge of the tent site handing out tickets for littering. A good $200 or so should ensure they pick up their shitty $45 Temu tents

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u/fatgat69 7h ago

They're overprivelaged pieces of trash

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u/Lucid-Crow 7h ago

I used to collect leftover stuff after festivals (to take to the next festivals). Most of those tents are not reuseable. Poles snapped and fabric ripped from drunks. Cheap gear to begin with. Same with most of the other camping equipment. What people leave behind is usually broken.

Mostly just found half drunk liquor bottles. For an alcoholic living in my van, that was the real treasure. I scavenged like 10,000,000 tent stakes, too. Could sell those for scrap.

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u/sillysided 8h ago

This is intense

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u/Dilusions 8h ago

They’re cheap, and after 3 days of a drug binder, that $25 tent isn’t worth the hassle.

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u/RoyalPuzzleheaded259 8h ago

I know. It’s been a while since I went to a festival but I don’t ever remember seeing abandoned tents like this.

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u/Schaas_Im_Void 8h ago

Because many people are plain stupid, lazy and don't give a shit.

Welcome to planet earth.

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u/jittery_raccoon 7h ago

Because you can buy relatively cheap ones. You can buy a tent for around $100, or find used ones for less possibly. People who only get it for a festival may see it as judt the price of going amd don't care about keeping the tent

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u/New-Possession-9248 7h ago

Packing up a tent in the wet and cold when you're hungover from a weekend of alcohol and drug abuse pretty much makes it a sealed deal.

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u/TillFar6524 7h ago

I might have a skewed perspective having only ever gone to festivals in the western and mid west US, and also grew up with the idea of leave no trace backpacking in wild country, but is there just less of a culture of camping in the UK? I know if I buy a new tent for a festival, I'm also going to have opportunity to use that tent at least a few times throughout the next year. It might be, at least in part, an attitude of, I'm never going to use that again so why bother figuring out how to take down and pack up the tent? Maybe no one ever showed or explained the reasons to bother with cleaning up after yourself when camping.

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u/killswitch101 7h ago

The hike to the campsite is a ball ache for a majority of festivals, combine that with a week of drinking/drugs/lack of sleep and people can't be fussed with packing up and carrying their things back

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u/Eris_AppleOfDiscord 7h ago

Rich kids. That's basically it. They live a disposable lifestyle and don't need to care about conserving anything.

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u/YogurtclosetWrong268 7h ago

More dollars than sense.

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u/Bubble-Master96 7h ago

I can admit I left mine when were 17 because we couldn’t be fucked taking it down so hung over and no one else was either. Since have learned and would never do that again.

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u/Popxorcist 7h ago

Garbage music attracts garbage people.

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u/i_nobes_what_i_nobes 7h ago

Because they’re lazy assholes. And they can’t be bothered to clean up after themselves.

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u/IckySmell 7h ago

They are cheap

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u/NoRun6253 7h ago

Not condoning it but after a weekend of getting fkd you just want home and I’m pretty sure they’re left for the less fortunate.

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u/BigmaEnjoyer 7h ago

Easier to abandon your 50$ tent that was engineered and manufactured in some temu affiliated sweatshop to last a whole of 3 days than to bring it back.

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u/beattysgirl 7h ago

Because they travel in from other places and are unable to take them home on the mode of travel they used to get there

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u/ThisSiteSucks8485 7h ago

They have gotten so cheap they are disposable 

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u/Wrong-Protection-188 7h ago

Wooks are trash people.

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u/gratefulyme 6h ago

A real answer- there aren't a lot of European festivals with camping, so this is a once a year event, a lot of the young people just buy a crappy tent, use it for the weekend, then leave it there. In the states some people will do this but most people take their campsites home because there are a lot more festivals they can attend, plus camping is a big hobby in a lot of the states.

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u/thisemmereffer 6h ago

You ever try and take a tent down with a head full of acid? Easier to just get in the car and drive

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u/Aphoris5 6h ago

It was like 5 bucks on temu

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u/Zealousideal-Deer101 6h ago

I know from my coworkers, that they leave them there, because it's just a hassle to pack them back up and everyone else leaves them there.

I told them that they are probably the same people that trash a theater and leave their waste there. Fucking disgusting ass trash animals

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u/TGirl26 6h ago

A lot of them fly in, buy a tent & then leave it behind because they can't take it on the plane.

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u/jbsdv1993 6h ago

I did once, the zip broke after day 1 (lukcily it didnt rain), then the innertent got ripped and a pole broke because someone fell on it on day 2. Me and my then bf were young teens at the time and had to haul all the camping stuff back on several trains and busses in our enormous backpacks. A trip that would be 6 hours long. The tent was only 25 euros. We didnt bother to pack it up. Some guys were thrilled that they were allowed to set it on fire for us.

Nowadays i would definitely not let people burn it and would just haul it to a garbage can myself. But i was 16, and the enviroment was hardly talked about back then.

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u/Susannah_Mio_1919 6h ago

From personal experience: Cheap airlines like Ryanair charge almost nothing for tickets but luggage costs a fortune (often like 20€ for a flight from one European country to another but luggage is 65€ per piece).  So when we were in our 20s I have to confess that we often bought very cheap tents and summer sleeping bags from lidl for 20-ish € and just left them to save the luggage fees on the return trip. But at least we folded them together and put them next to the trash can. Still fucked but well... 

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u/Hobbit_Sam 6h ago

Yeah, honestly I'd think that locals would go through there and take down tents just to keep them lol At the very least, let volunteers go through, keep whatever they wanted, and THEN pay people to go through and clean haha

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u/avanross 6h ago

They’re all spoiled rich kids

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u/HeadySquanch59 6h ago

After a multiple day long drug fest the last thing you have to do is take apart and pack a tent. Suddenly just leaving instead seems like a much easier option. (I do not support it and have personally achieved getting the tent into the car)

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u/Hungry_Bluebird_4734 6h ago

Packing them back up into the tiny bags they come in while hungover is just not something people want to do for the sake of a £20-30 tent.

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u/Shintasama 6h ago

reading festival

Why do so many people abandon tents?

They were probably eaten by librarians. That would explain the lack of books on the ground as well.

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u/OverallResolve 6h ago

There isn’t much of a deterrent - not that it should be up to that but I think it’s a large part of why.

  1. Camping equipment can be incredibly cheap so the financial incentive is low.
  2. Enough people do it that there isn’t going to be a critical mass of shame.
  3. The people who do this get to leave and forget about the mess.
  4. Reading tends to have a younger audience, so an argument can be made that there is a maturity element to this.
  5. The festival isn’t adding any penalties for this (I have been to other festivals where you pay a £20 deposit per ticket and get it back if you bring a filled bag of trash or recycling).
  6. People will be hungover and less likely to want to do it relative to a normal morning.

I absolutely hate it

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u/gruetzentoni 5h ago

when the festivals ticket costs 250 € but the tent is 30 €, suddenly the price of the tent isnt that important anymore

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u/Careless_Book_2747 5h ago

Because in the UK they are cheap as hell.

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u/Happy-Combination560 5h ago

I know a group of people that had two tents. One was for sleeping and the other was a dedicated "piss tent".

People are disgusting and don't give a shit about who cleans up after them.

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u/AbeRego 5h ago

I assume that some people flew, bought the tent nearby, then couldn't take it home. That's not the only reason, but it is a reason at every major festival.

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u/skoomski 5h ago

They aren’t very expensive but are difficult to fold back up and store. So they just don’t give a shit and ditch them

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u/Admirable-Map6769 5h ago

Because the festival is extremely messy with people being drunk, high, and filthy from a weekend of getting fucked up and not washing. The toilets last time I went were effectively holes above a skip.

So people buy the cheapest tent, and then come Monday morning when they're filthy, hungover and coming down they just take one look at their tent and go "fuck it".

One Sunday night it was so crazy with people doing crazy shit that we just left in the middle of the night.

It ain't right, but that's why. It's a festival that's pretty immature, wasteful and selfish in its vibe. At least it was when I stopped going.

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u/chrisaf69 5h ago

They are so low in cost, they are looked at as disposable for events like this unfortunately.

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