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.
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.
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.
Exactly. Was at a festival where a woman's bead dress exploded. She just shrugged and walked off. About 10 of us spent a while picking it all up, and then we tracked her down and put it in her trash along with a lecture to her and her camp. We don't do that here....
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
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.
Same. And well run festivals like Bonnaroo have trash collection procedures that work. Trash bags are handed out constantly, and there are designated trash disposal locations that people actually use.
I was at Woodstock (the original one in '94, not the one with the rapes and the fires in '99) and though it wasn't this bad there were still plenty of sleeping bags, pads and tents left behind.
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.
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.
Obviously there are some good and responsible people in the crowd, but the evidence left behind by every single festival over and over again is overwhelmingly damning for the majority of people who attend these events.
"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
Yeah, the hypocrisy makes my stomach turn. I’m sure the organizers often have good intentions, but the reality is that many of the event goers don’t share that altruism and the event does more harm than good.
Well, ive got the real answer for you my friends as to why they abandon tents.
They pack a bunch of stuff in. They party hard. Last thing they wana do hungover at the end of a festival and pack up a fucking tent. Ever tried squeezing one in a bag? Fuck that. Then carry all that heavy shit out? Hell nah. Thats why they leave unopened beer and shit too. its heavy
They just wana grab whatever is light, and get the fuck home to their bed so they can recover for work
Plus you know how much a festival cost? Buying two tacos and a drink is the same price as that tent. It is definately disposable in this case
Maybe they shouldn’t go to the festival and get a hangover then if they cant handle the responsibility of cleaning up after themselves. I’ve gone camping many times, it’s not hard to pack up a tent. But I’m also responsible and actually care about other people and the environment.
“Festival goers” is such a broad category of people you aren’t making the “gotcha” point you think you are here. “Festival goers” is essentially inclusive of just about every walk of life out there. There are festivals for every genre of music, there are festivals for everything but music. It’s hilarious seeing posts like this on Reddit because before you even glance at the comments, you know without fail there’ll be some friendless redditor who never leaves the house who’s convinced themselves they are in the right and completely morally superior for doing so.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah this festival genuinly picks things up. They also check out abandoned tents and all that, but highly appreciate it if you just deposit it yourself.
Friend of mine bought a new cheapish pot for the festival and decided to leave it because it was too big and he wanted to get something better for camping. The pot is completly fine otherwise but it would be gathering dust on his shelves. Perfect to just give to the next person.
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.
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.
If you share a 6 person tent with 4 people it's an additional ~20 a person. Consider that a full pass is 325, so really a very minimal cost even if you do it year after year. The festival would need a way to make it more expensive to leave your tent if they want attendees to take their trash with them.
If you don’t want it afterward because you bought it cheap and you’re a fucking slob and pissed all over it or whatever, fine, but it’s still YOUR TRASH. You can’t just leave it behind because you don’t want to deal with it. This is a very basic concept even older children understand. JFC.
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.
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.
people also do it with much more expensive tents, we got a free £200 RRP brand new tent at a festival last month because some dickhead left it. completely serviceable, will last us 10+ years
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.
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.
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
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.
It sounds like part of the issue is that they don't have Walmart tents. Ozark Trail (Walmart brand) tents are solid tents, so people in the US don't abandon tents because those are our regular car camping tents.
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.
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?
The overwhelming majority won't fly to festivals. If they do, and they bring a tent, are you suggesting they'd get checked luggage one way but not the other so they throw away a tent to save themselves the fee? I'd imagine a significant amount of people who fly to festivals will not be camping anyway.
Cost money to fly it home, too. Many of these tents are oversized cargo, even when packed. So the cost of flying it home may be close to the entire price of the tent, bought in-situ.
People see these tents as disposable products much like a paper plate. You could clean off a paper plate and reuse it a few times but no one does that. These tents are often the cheapest ones they could find, like $50-$100 I imagine. Split 2-4 ways means you are going to spend more on a meal at these festivals than you did on the tent so if its destroyed or abandoned it doesn't really matter to them.
It is indeed dumb logic and wasteful but sadly that is how people think. They know the tent is going to be a wreck by the end of it, many of them do not camp out in tents normally and treat their tents like garbage so its inevitable that they get destroyed but like the other people have said, you dont get to take the hotel room home when you are done so if you treat your tent in the same way then it doesnt really matter to them if they leave it.
Surely those people would just camp in pre-pitched tents or some other premium sleeping system? It's cheaper AND easier to get a pre-pitched tent than it is to buy a tent...
There is simply no situation where buying a tent specifically to throw it away makes sense
Yeah youre right. The hundreds have no clue....or, people make different choices about how they live, what they are willing to waste etc.
Let's face it we all "waste". Maybe you drive an unnecessarily big vehicle or don't carpool when you could. Maybe you enjoy getting the newest and greatest phone every 2 years instead of dealing with a battery with a little less life.
The truth is unless the phone/computer you're using to post this is weaved with native grasses, you have a footprint youre responsible for too but you feel youre decisions are right for you.
Im not religious but maybe your are. "He who hath not sinned, cast the first stone." Your righteous indignation may make you feel temporarily superior but I highly doubt you don't leave a mark on this world.
If this field was left like this, I bet there were circumstances that led to this. Perhaps storms made organizers clear the site and the storm lasted long enough that people just bailed. Things can get really uncomfortable when youre cold, wet and unprepared for harsh weather. Let's say the weather wasn't projected to change for 30 hours and the festival would be over by then. Are you saying youd stay more than a day to get your soaking wet sleeping bag and tent, assuming they didnt get destroyed in storm?
No it's not a loss compared to your expenses if you were mentally accounting for staying at a hotel before that.
It's also not a loss if it's just shitty friends borrowing stuff from their friends and not giving you shit if they just have to be a little apologetic for their friend or something when they get back home.
In every festivalw there're abandoned tents. Even if 1% of them are stolen, it would still be impossible or some kind of conspiracy.
Bc tents aren't lying around to be stolen.
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.
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.
It's just shitty behavior, humans are animals and the thin veneer of civilization hides selfish and boarish behavior. Everyone is capable of cleaning up after themselves but it's easier to just let someone else.
I think they should just leave all that crap there and next year you got your festival on a garbage dump, enjoy. There are zero consequences for actions, and it'll always be a trashy mess. And it's nothing more than entitlement to think you paid to go to a festival so someone should clean up your mess.
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
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.
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.
My festival days ended decades ago, but I know how hard some kids save to go to Gastonbury, Reading etc. Wildly claiming that festivals are a sole preserve of the rich only highlights your ignorance.
You are projecting an attack that I did not make. Read what I said and take it literally, I’m autistic there is no intended subtext. Most is not all, and I’m sorry you’re so hurt by what I said.
I'm not hurt, I'm disinterested in the whole subect. But, you said what you said and it needed pointing out that it was ill-reasoned horseshit. Good day.
Relative to the price of the festival, or compared to the price of a hotel room, they're really cheap, even if you only use it once, ESPECIALLY if several people are sharing the cost. They probably spend more on alcohol than they do on the tents.
I just checked Amazon, a 2 person tent can be as cheap as 40 bucks, and a six person like 100. so if you and 3 friends pitch 25 bucks you get a tent that you don't care about.
Makes me feel bad because I have a 2-man tent that was like 200 bucks, but it's also a more specialized tent compared to whatever you'll get at amazon.
Cheap tents can be like £20 they are shit and fall apart after one use (if they last that long) not defending it but the tents are destined for landfill before they are even bought. The world we love in is insane.
Tent's are relatively cheap disposable for people, since they don't have to pay to lug it back to their home by air. This was similar when I went to Florida for vacation, when I went to Walmart. So much tourists, and lots of cheap beach toys for kids to play and abandon.
The cost to take down safely (needles, sharp objects etc), transport, clean, sanitize and store until given away would almost guarantee the process costs more than buying new tents in bulk from a wholesaler.
I see you are not a festival goer. These mostly are known as "popups" (at least in Germany). You can buy such tents for 40€ on Amazon. My friends bought cheap popup tents and chairs like that with the intent of leaving them behind. So they can leave quickly and without much weight while being hangover. Downside is, while I was at the open air festival with my genuine hiking tent and the others with their cheap popups I was the only one not wet and sick after a day of heavy rain. All tents but mine where submerged in water. All who slept in cheap tents had become sick. I slept like a baby completely dry.
Anyway yeah, pricing for throw-away tents and sometimes chairs is precalculated in the festival trip. I.e. they don't care.
I want to clarify that I am completely against this behaviour and have never left trash at these sites. I have also not been to a festival for several years now.
you can pick them up in Aldi or Lidl for a tenner. I've had one in my garden shed for twenty years, never used. It's probably completely unfit for purpose by now.
Someone that goes to a festival for the weekend is probably paying a few hundred dollars just to get in. Possible they'll drop another hundred just to park somewhere for the weekend.
Then they're going to pay hundreds more in food, beverages, merchandise, etc.
I dont think the people leaving behind unopened booze and tents are the picture of fiscal responsibility. It it literally more convenient for them to leave it behindm
It is but if you're flying in for a festival it may be less expensive to buy one locally and ditch it than to pay for shipping of your own personal tent. It's definitely gross but this is why it happens
You can easily buy a bundle of tent,mat,sleeping bag for sub £40. Shit quality, but fine for a night. You're not a camping sort of person, so you're not going to be reusing it. So you're basically paying £40 for shelter for the night, and then those nice people come around and collect all the unwanted ones, and give them to charity (for clarity, this does not happen) so you're basically doing a service for charity!
You can get cheap tents for like $30-40. They are very low quality and tend to leak and tear easily, but for a festival you probably aren’t staying anyway if the weather gets shitty. If they didn’t put down a tarp there is a pretty good chance they are already damaged.
Those tents all fall in the $100 or less category, a sum of money likely not to bother your average festival goer who spends more than that on everything else. Some of them are probably even $60 or less.
Tents, all things considered, are insanely cheap for what they are. Anyone who buys the really expensive, high quality tents is likely an avid camper and isn't going to leave it behind.
Last tent i bought was under $30 and lasted me about 4 years until i was too lazy to flod it back up and it got moldy. Thats probably the cost of like 2 beers and a hot dog at the festival.
Not that i condone littering, just pointing out that you can get tents for cheap. Im of the belief that you should leave your camp site looking like no one was there, but most of my camping has been in the backwoods and we were probably trespassing at many of these sites now that i think about it.
Not as much as attendance ticket. Nobody would leave your fancy ass ultralight Dyneema or giant tent there, I assume that 90+% of stuff in the video is bought from Temu and intended to be disposable by attendees. Would be cool if it's salvageable or useable by anybody else, but this is mostly landfill material.
Right? I treat my 150$ Coleman tent like it's treasure. Deep clean after every trip AND I even put it away to fit in it's original bag. I don't care how difficult it is, I'm keeping it pristine for as long as fucking possible.
Probably the same people who leave a complete mess in the theater because "hey, that's what their getting paid to do. If I don't, they'll be out of a job"
I went to a 4th of July party in San Diego at the beach (20 years ago)
Never saw so many people at the beach in my life. Shoulder the shoulder for miles.
After the party my brother left all his beer cans on the beach. I asked him why he wasn't cleaning them up? He says everyone just leaves the cans and the homeless people come at night and clean the beach with a fine-tooth comb.
He said by the next day you won't see a single can anywhere.
The next day, he was completely right. Not a single can to be seen.
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u/Ancient-Emu-8293 8h ago
Would be pretty convenient to pretend believing that.