This article looks into Glastonbury 2019 and what actions individuals can take to make it the most sustainable music festival in the world.

At age 16 I went to Glastonbury 2007 and I instantly fell in love with the festival. It is a big festival, with an unrivalled quantity and quality of entertainment on offer.

But big events have big impacts on the environment and Glastonbury is no different in this regard. The sustainability agenda at Glastonbury is driven under the agenda of Love The Farm Leave No Trace. There is also the slogan that runs underneath of Reuse Reduce Respect.

I would say that whilst these slogans have been good in raising the profile of the festival’s impact on the environment, you still see frequent instances of behaviour that is detrimental to the environment.

Linked to the love the farm leave no trace slogan is the green pledge that everyone who buys a ticket is made to agree to.  You can find an image of these below.

If you are reading this and you are going this year, please try and adhere to the pledge that you made.

Taking your tent home saves you money and saves the organisers having to divert money away from entertainment and spending it on clean up costs.

Using bins is fairly common standard practice. If you had friends over for a BBQ, you wouldn’t like it if they littered all over your property.

Glastonbury probably has more recycling bins, with good quality labelling than any other festival, please use them.

Urinating on the land is probably not something that people think would be extremely problematic, but when you multiply that by 200,000 attendees, even if only a small percentage of them urinate on the land, this leads to serious problems. You wouldn’t like it if people did it in your house, so please do not do it on the farm.

Glastonbury has been doing loads on single use plastics, even going as far as banning plastic drinks bottles at this year’s edition. Please bring a re-usable one with you to help reduce the volume of waste that is generated.

These are fairly simple ambitions, but if they were implemented by everyone that is attending or working at Glastonbury it would make a real difference.

Thank you for reading,

By Barnaby Nash

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or reach out to me on social media. What do you think makes a festival a sustainable festival?

Let’s stay connected

I can be reached on LinkedIn and on Twitter @FollowBarnaby