How green is Glastonbury? Top 10 sustainability facts…

Here we take a look at Glastonbury Festival’s Top 10 in sustainability:

1)  It costs £780,000 to dispose of all the rubbish left over at the festival, which this year expects 175,000 people to attend. To promote recycling and waste disposal, the organisers work by the motto of ‘Love the Farm, leave no trace.’

2)   Glastonbury aims to recycle 60% of all waste this year and the site features around 15,000 refuse and recycling bins.

3)  The festival team features a 1,300 volunteer ‘Recycling Crew’. Many of the volunteers receive free tickets in exchange for working shifts over the weekend or helping to clear up afterwards.

4)  Organisers estimate that 1 million plastic bottles are used each year during the five days of music. More than 11 million litres of water are consumed each year at the festival.

5)  Therefore, in order to reduce plastic waste, this year organisers are distributing reusable steel bottles and have set up 400 drinking water taps around the site.

6)  Glastonbury is ‘Not For Shale’. On the June 20, Michael and Emily Eavis, who run Worthy Farm where Glastonbury is hosted, released a statement saying that the farm will never be used as a site for fracking:

“I oppose Fracking on the grounds that Shale gas is not the type of energy that we should be producing in Britain. We should be investing in renewable resources for future generations and for the health of our Planet.”

7)  Worthy Farm features the largest privately owned solar photovoltaic array in the UK, with 1,500 square metres of solar panels with a capacity of 200kW. Solar and wind power areas around the site including cafés, stalls and stages.

8)  Festival organisers have been using New Holland tractors which are capable of running on 100% biodiesel recycled from used cooking oil. Eleven of the British-built ‘green tractors’ will be used on the site.

9)  Glastonbury donates £1m to international and local charities each year. It is the single biggest regular donor to Greenpeace and also supports its official partners WaterAid and Oxfam.

10)  Glastonbury runs a Green Traveller scheme to encourage travel by public transport or bicycle, offering prizes and free food vouchers to those who participate. An estimated 40,000 people, 23% of festival goers, will travel to Glastonbury by coach or train this year.

Matt Field