Boardmasters in Cornwall, is the first full festival I have ever been too. I've never been too excited about the prospect of spending days on end hemmed into organised crowds\/fun. However the idea that a beach was on the doorstep with surf a potential made Boardmasters a viable option to take the family and see if it was something for EOS to have a small presence in the future.<\/p>
My conclusion today however is a definite no for now. We think that festivals such as Boardmasters has a long way to go to get the balance right between fun and sustainably responsibility. Don't get me wrong, we had a blast and just let go of our inhibitions and got immersed - it was the only way. There were many fantastic performances going on. Th logistics of the whole operation is just mind blowing. In the middle of a 35 degree heatwave the beach access (although a 1.5 mile walk) was a life saver.<\/p>
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So what is wrong?<\/p>
For us, it is the scale of irresponsible hedonism, rubbish and plastic pollution that these festivals produce is the issue. I don't think EOS as a brand trying to be sustainable could associate with. We have to commend the rubbish bond where you have to pay \u00a310 per person for a rubbish bag and you get the \u00a310 back when you hand it back in, the amount of bins for recycling (mostly ignored unfortunately) and the re-susuable pint mugs. Nevertheless the amount of handed in rubbish was quite extreme. At least this didn\u2019t make it\u2019s way to the surrounding environment. <\/p>
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It is though, heart breaking to see the amount of rubbish dropped or purposely left around the whole area, particularly the vast camping areas and unfortunately the beach. Much of this (but not all) in this case was down to all the post GCSE and A level teenagers who were perhaps tasting their first bite of freedom, but however didn\u2019t seem to have much sense of responsibility for their surroundings. Is it not the job of the Festival to educate first before getting a license? <\/p>
If Festivals are to become more responsible and I hope they are, then they need to have a much longer term sustainability plan for their audience. <\/p>
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Could Boardmasters, Glastonbury, Reading et al etc spend some time and money educating their future customers about the lifecycle of their litter damage and how it is not right to just leave their crap everywhere for someone else to deal (or not deal with)? At present their didn\u2019t seem any consequence at all for rubbishing the area. Lets face it huge amounts of money are made by the festivals, but is this at the price of ecosystems, community and sustainability. <\/p>
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All the marshals were doing a fantastic job around the site, but why not have marshals not allowing people to leave until they had cleared up. It is laziness on the behalf of most of the campers in this case. This was endemic of the campers but also was epitomised to me further afield, and here are two instances.<\/p>
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On walking to the sea edge for a surf with my two children we saw a group of 4 packing up to leave. There was a load of beer cans, take out boxes and plastic bottles on the beach where they were sitting. They looked to walk away. Another surfer challenged them and the response was it wasn't theirs and nothing to do with them. Even if this was the case they had no issue with it being left there rather than taking some. I then challenged them on why in the whole beach would they choose to sit by a big pile of litter. Again the response was the same. It wasn't until I said \"well if you take some now, then my children and myself will take up the rest after we have been surfing\" that they actually did something about it. The girls in the group picked it up and eventually they all did. However to think they were happy for it to just get washed away in the sea is beyond belief.<\/p>
The second incident, and this I think is endemic of so many beach users, is to see a bin overflowing then bags of litter just left on the ground, when 15 meters away there were 4 empty bins.<\/p>
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While I am sure that the organisations clean up completely afterwards, there has to be something more that can be done to improve the approach and responsibility that the hundreds of thousands of festival goers take.<\/p>
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If anyone is reading this you might think I am tarring all with the same brush (where did that saying even come from??). There are definitely more responsible people there, however the overwhelming impression for me is that most don't seem to care too much.<\/p>
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Ironically though Surfers Against Sewage are decorated on the main stage. I would say that this one festival (and I dread to think what the bigger ones do), probably produced more waste that could end up in our oceans that a season or two of normal beach goers.<\/p>
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So our very quick solution, or to make a start: Get in schools, educate and set examples, highlight recycling areas and marshal them. The rest will follow and the experience will be better all round for the local community, ecosystems and festival goers themselves.<\/p>
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