08 : 42 am |9th September 2010

News

FESTIVAL WELLINGTONS GIVEN NEW LIFE IN AFRICA

30/05/2008

Festival-goers coming to this year’s Glastonbury Festival are being urged to think green before they arrive. “Travel light, don’t bring unnecessary clutter and leave the site as you found it” is the watchword for 2008. The overall message is “Love the farm – leave no trace”.

In particular, festival-goers are being encouraged to take their camping equipment, sleeping bags and tents home with them, rather than abandoning them on the site.

A new partnership between Glastonbury Festival and leading social enterprise ECT Recycling should meanwhile ensure that good use is made of any camping equipment left behind after the event. All abandoned equipment, textiles and Wellington boots will be collected for re-use, some of which will go to the Frip Ethique project in Senegal. Paper, plastic and cans will also be collected for recycling.

Frip Ethique, a unique partnership between ECT Recycling and Oxfam, employs 40 people to sort and bale second-hand clothing for onward sale to local market traders. Run as a social company, the staff are employed under ethical working conditions and paid a decent wage.

Glastonbury mounts a major operation to ensure that as much as possible of the waste generated on site is recycled. 1,200 litter picking volunteers collect and sort waste deposited in 17,000 clearly labelled rubbish and recycling bins.

The new contract with ECT Recycling, a social enterprise, should ensure that most of the items left after the festival will also either be recycled or reused. Over eight tonnes of Wellington boots left behind after last year’s festival have already been shipped to Senegal for reuse.

“ECT Recycling is delighted to have won the recycling and waste management contract for the Glastonbury Festival,” said Rudi Van Langenaecker, Glastonbury Contract Manager for ECT Recycling. “We are really going to put the emphasis on recycling and are confident it will help to significantly increase the recycling rate at this year’s festival.”

“This arrangement means that the wellies will get recycled properly,” said Festival Organiser Michael Eavis. “They won’t get shipped out and made into something else. They’ll be used by people in Africa to wear again, which is great.”

Glastonbury Festival has introduced a wide range of green initiatives over the years, including a 50% recycling rate, reduced use of private cars, compostable cups and cutlery, anti-pollution measures and this year, the distribution of a million biodegradable tent pegs.

Notes to Editors

• Over 175,000 people attend the Glastonbury festival annually - it is the largest green field music and performing arts festival in the world. Tickets are still available through www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk.

• ECT is committed to incorporating social responsibility, environmental sustainability and economic viability into all that it does. Visit www.ectrecycling.co.uk.

• Since 2006 in partnership with Oxfam, ECT Recycling has run Frip Ethique, a Senegalese company which imports reusable clothing from the UK. It provides good quality employment for over 40 staff, helping raise their families from poverty.

• Photos of the Frip Ethique project are available on request from ECT.