With festivals, come trash. With millions of attendees, pollution is bound to pile up. It's the responsibility of all involved to make sure the land isn't impacted by these events. The sad thing is, often it is. One prime example was Electric Forest. This year the festival was cut back to one weekend due to a build-up of trash destroying the landscape.
An organization that is looking to reduce this impact is an environmental group called Clean Up Britain. They are working to propose a "tent tax" that will require festivals to charge attendees a deposit when they arrive (if they are camping). The deposit would guarantee all trash and tents would be removed from the assigned area in order for the attendee to receive the money-back. For all the money not returned, the organization believes the festival should then donate the money to charity.
In a quote to The Independent: the founder of Clean Up Britain spoke on the reasoning behind the proposed tax.
"It's more about trying to get the festival advertisers to accept, as part of their green sustainability strategy, that this should be part of it next year. The festival-goers need to understand that it's not good enough in this day and age just to abandon a tent which is in most cases is probably perfectly good to clean and reuse."
What do you think of the idea of a "tent tax"? Do you think this will help festival pollution, or stir up backlash for hiked up fees and the inability to enforce?
Leave a comment below to let us know!