r/Wellthatsucks • u/mattloaf666 • 9h ago

Reading festival 2026

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12.6k Upvotes

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430

u/PublicProperty1805 8h ago

There should be a deposit attached to ticket price and when you scan out if you aren't carrying tent with you you don't get deposit back.

86

u/KITT_the_Cylon 7h ago

This is how they do it at Nova Rock in Austria.
You pay 50 eur for a big trash bag, and if you dont bring the big bag full of waste at the end, you wont get the 50 back, which then goes to the cleanup effort.

8

u/jimmycarr1 6h ago

Same at Boomtown festival in England

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u/notworseit 4m ago

That’s the way…unfortunately necessary

113

u/ih8makingupnames 8h ago

Although a good idea, most entitled people wouldn't give a fuck and would still walk out empty handed.

131

u/fatgat69 7h ago

It would still be a good idea to take as much of their money as possible because at least then they don't have as much.

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u/momaLance 7h ago

And you can pay cleanup crews

5

u/ItsIllak 5h ago

They do, although this is bad, the festival organisers return the site to pre-event state (well, pre event plus the impact of that many people walking all over it).

2

u/Aegi 4h ago

Of course, but don't you think since their whole point is to at least make more than $0 that this would help towards that goal?

1

u/ItsIllak 3h ago

They're festival organisers, so at some point they'll probably start asking a fee for that, but in the UK these have to be transparent at the time of purchase so it's just another way of defining, "what the market will bear".

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u/Alma_Holzhurt 8m ago

How naive are you? The fact that these festivals typically are commerical operations aimed at turning a profit and not charity events is completely lost on you, isn't it?

Those organizers are already charging attendees "as much of their money as possible" because that is how business / greed works. Now try to add some on top of that an people simply won't attend.

3

u/heidismiles 6h ago

But that's what the deposit is for. To cover the costs of cleanup.

3

u/Aegi 4h ago

Good, then that extra revenue can be used by the venue to pay people to pick up the trash and if they're already doing that they can afford to pay them more!

2

u/dbxp 3h ago

People are paid for that, a festival organiser can't just walk off having trashed a venue

4

u/Tall-Ad6328 7h ago

Yaip, but the festival would make a shit ton of money and would be able to invite actual artists

1

u/MaMerde 6h ago

Or bring an extra unused tent.

1

u/404NameOfUser 3h ago

At least they would pay for the clean up.

1

u/Deewwsskkii 2h ago

Atleast it would pay for a proper cleanup. Due to all the needles and human waste that are surely spread out all over the place this should automatically be classified as a biohazard cleaning job with certain precautions (which isn’t cheap). I would bet currently they just send out minimum wage festival employees to deal with this.

33

u/Cosimo_Zaretti 7h ago

Cleaning the site is costed in to the the ticket price. Shame the people who didn't trash the joint also pay it.

If you could claim a deposit for taking your tent, people would just toss it once they were out the gate.

26

u/jimmycarr1 6h ago

At Boomtown you pay an eco bond of £10 and if you give them a bag full of trash or recycling at the end of the festival you get it back.

3

u/Aiken_Drumn 6h ago

It's £20.

0

u/Admirable-Setting261 5h ago

This is the way. We should do the same for homeless people

2

u/Toutatous 5h ago

The problem is that people have sometimes a different logic. If they see "cleaning fee"on their ticket, they care even less. Someone is paid to do it, so why would I bother doing anything?!?

5

u/RiskItForAChocHobnob 7h ago

Really hard to enforce. There's separate exits for the the coaches, the car park, shuttle busses, boats and people walking. You might have several people in the one tent who are taking different modes of transport home and therefore leaving through different exits, only one of whom will be taking the tent with them.

1

u/darwin2500 5h ago

Yeah I think that if you tried to have a single exit where people were checking every person's bags before they could leave, people would literally die in crush incidents or heat stroke waiting to get out.

Once the event is over, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to get home efficiently without trampling each other.

3

u/3412points 7h ago edited 7h ago

This won't work. 

For one, there isn't a price high enough to stop this from happening and simultaneously low enough that people will still buy tickets.

For two, it's a massively expensive logistical nightmare for the festival. Processing all of those people is incredibly slow and requires a ton of staff. It will turn the process of getting people out into a full day needing a full crew to manage it.

Plus, not every ticket purchaser is coming with a tent. Many of them are sharing. You'd need to be verifying that only people who pay the deposit come with tents on the way in, another logistical process to add on to an already tough logistical job of getting people in.

1

u/Bored_Amalgamation 4h ago

If a job can't be done correctly, and the alternative is environmental destruction, maybe don't do the job in the first place. Getting fucking up in the woods is a reasonable sacrifice to raise the standard of humanity a bit more.

2

u/jankyz 7h ago

What if I didn't bring a tent. You expect festival level security to keep track of everyone who walked in with a tent 3 days ago?

2

u/DoorFinch 7h ago

"Leave your tent! You don't have to feel guilty leaving your crap behind, because you're paying for it to be cleared by someone else!"

2

u/Jamelo 1h ago

They do this at European festivals, works a treat.

3

u/WingedSword_ 8h ago

I get the sense that these are the kind of people who:  -do not like organized central authority, such as designated entrances and exists, or lines.  -like to see how well they can game the system for fun and to mock it. 

Half won't care, the other half will find a way to get the deposit before dumping their tent back in the are to "stick it to the man."

1

u/3412points 7h ago

No mate they're just lazy and wasteful and don't want bother bringing it back.

1

u/Rand0m_m7 7h ago

The festival I visited had a 10€ deposit you got back when returning a full trashbag. The pollution on the camp site was still there but far less than on other festivals.

1

u/islaisla 6h ago

I actually thought that was the norm. Last three festivals I've been to it was a £10 deposit, otherwise you couldn't get in the tent area. Then you take photos of your cleared up space to get it back.

But they could easily give that ten pounds to people who clear up a deserted tent space if rich people have not bothered to get the ten pounds back. So you could easily make £100-200 in a day just doing that.

1

u/Professional-Box4153 6h ago

The tents probably cost more than the deposit would.

1

u/elingeniero 6h ago

That just sets a price to be allowed to leave all your shit behind and more people would choose to pay it.

1

u/AbeRego 5h ago

Ah yes, because everyone camping has their own tent.

Also, you don't scan out of any festival or event I've ever attended...

1

u/SixtyNineFlavours 5h ago

Talking bout the Eco Bond?

1

u/darwin2500 5h ago

At almost $500 per ticket, most people assume that things like cleanup costs are already included in what they paid (or should be).

1

u/RoadmanChat 5h ago

Dumb idea because people share tents, some leave at different times, some arrive at different times.

1

u/jsting 5h ago

Another solution is that the price of cleanup is factored into the budget and ticket price. This is an annual event so that should be the case.

1

u/nalaloveslumpy 4h ago

The venue just cooks the cost of clean up into the ticket price. Big, multi-day festivals like this are always priced to include a huge, industrial clean up crew.

1

u/FarmerJohnOSRS 4h ago

If the organisers wanted people to keep it tidy they would provide the means to be able to.

1

u/Satta-Massagana 4h ago

A better option is to force the organisers to buy a bond that covers the cleanup costs. They can then roll that into the ticket prices.

1

u/dbxp 3h ago

Most festivals have pre set tents you can rent but they cost a few hundred, unless the deposit is £50+ then i don't think it will have any impact. For those coming from abroad you'd have to set the cost at £200+ and even then you might end up with a pile just outside the festival grounds.

1

u/Ccracked 2h ago

"For years, the fabulously beautiful planet of Bethselamin increased its booming tourist industry without any worries at all. Alas, as is often the case, this was an act of utter stupidity, as it led to a colossal cumulative erosion problem. Of course, what else could one expect with ten billion tourists per annum? Thus today the net balance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave; so every time you go to the lavatory there, it is vitally important to get a receipt."

*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*

1

u/Gogglesed 2h ago

Then someone will create inflatable fake tent bags.

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u/CommieDrifter 38m ago edited 34m ago

it's not like the festivals are unprepared, all of this gets bulldozed in a single day, super wasteful yes, but it's not gonan make a difference to the festival, even if there weren't tents, there would still be a weeks worth of trash. Also those tents are basically single use at this point, they have become so cheap and so shitty, that having them last for an entire festival is pretty much a miracle.
Evey one of the tents that leave that factory will suffer the same fate whether its at a festival or in nature, whether its bulldozed, or disposed of when you come home it will ultimately end up in landfill or an incinerator either way, so it seems more sensible to regulate the production rather than specific use cases

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u/JohannesVanDerWhales 29m ago

I'm sure a lot of this is because of rich kids who don't care about the cost of a tent. I dunno that a deposit would deter them.

0

u/prankenandi 7h ago

The campsite should be marked out into small sections, and you pay a deposit for each section. However, it should be a substantial amount – for example, half the ticket price or thereabouts. If your section is clean at the end, you’ll automatically get your deposit back.

2

u/tobpe93 6h ago

Would they pay people to go around and inspect?

It will cost less to pay people for cleaning up afterwards.

0

u/kobekillinu 6h ago

I mean that is standard at all the festivals in Central and Eastern Europe and it works, ..... but yeah, UK is not part of the EU so