MUSIC fans take a whopping £795 quid’s worth of gear to a festival…and leave a couple hundred quid’s worth behind, a new survey reveals.
Four million Brits will abandon £2,000,000 worth of tents and sleeping bags alone each year, according to a new study.
Three in ten (30%) festival goers leave their tents and sleeping bags behind – worth an average of £140 in the mistaken belief that they are collected and given to charity.
The research commissioned by Go Outdoors found that booze was a more important item than sun screen and wellies to festival goers. Alcohol is also more important than food as the average spend on booze is £56.26 versus £46.27 on items to eat.
But the lack of soap and water doesn’t put them off sex. An astonishing 46% say they get jiggy under canvas at a festival, despite sites being crammed with tents almost on top of each other.Hygiene is less of a priority as 63% of festival goers fail to have a shower for the duration of the event no matter how hot or muddy it is, mainly because they hate queuing for washing facilities and loos. Instead they rely on wet wipes, with nearly a quarter (22%) saying they are one of the most important items to take with them.
Which could be why, over a quarter (26%) of those surveyed bought a tent solely to use once at a festival. More than three quarters of men admitted this (76%) compared to 69% of their female counterparts.
Tents are not the only aftermath, as 10% of those surveyed have also left other camping equipment, such as chairs. Litter such as empty bottles (34%), rubbish (26%) and leftover food and drink (22%) were the items more likely to be left behind.
Dougie Poynter of McFly and Author of Plastic Sucks says: “The environmental and plastic crisis needs to be front of mind in every environment. Being at a festival ain’t no time to get slack, litter and forget about recycling. I urge festival goers to remember to re-use equipment and recycle wherever they can, just as they would if they were at home.”
View the full case study here to find out how we carried out this research and the coverage it generated.
