Festival Litter

I attended this year's Wireless Festival at Hyde Park (05 July). It was a good experience. The atmosphere was nice, the people were chilled and the music was good.
There was just one thing - the litter on the floor.

Any litter you can name was on the floor - mainly empty plastic beer bottles. It was like walking through the Red Sea of litter. I have never seen anything like it. When performers came on people threw their plastic bottles in the air and I got doused in beer plenty of times (not great). The more they liked the performer the more they threw their bottles.

The promoter of the festival was Live Nation. On its website it states the following: "Recycling systems will be in place to segregate all cardboard, plastic, paper and cans from back of house and the waste from the audience will be sent through a sorting process to extract all recyclable elements. All vendors will be using biodegradable packaging and wooden utensils across the site to avoid plastic packaging including polystyrene."

But what it fails to mention is that festival goers have no place to throw their rubbish so they just use the floor. There were bins at the event but not enough.

It seems as if litter pickers were just paid to pick the litter - poor them.

If we do not target the young to give out the message that it is not cool to throw litter then that generation will grow up thinking that it is OK to do it.

I think nobody is brave enough to challenge anyone, young or old, who drops litter nowadays for fear of getting into a confrontational situation.

Liz Gyekye, Senior Reporter, MRW