Efforts to make the world’s largest music pageant sustainable have an effect on the whole lot from trash pickup to wheelchair entry to youngster security. Is it attainable for 200,000+ campers to “depart no hint?”
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, HOST:
A yr after Woodstock was held within the U.S., a British farmer determined to do one thing comparable and invited rock stars to his household farm. That was southwest England in 1970. And now 54 years later, Glastonbury is without doubt one of the world’s largest music festivals. This weekend’s lineup consists of Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Shania Twain. Even now, the five-day pageant one way or the other manages to stay to its founder’s motto of depart no hint on the land. NPR’s Lauren Frayer takes a take a look at how.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: It seems like each inch of grass is taken by a sea of multiclored tents. There are tons of of hundreds of individuals tenting out right here. The world is dotted with these large levels, a number of tales excessive. There’s even a pop-up lodge with a swimming pool put in in it.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
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FRAYER: No plastic or glass is allowed right here. All the things is biodegradable and compostable. However there’s nonetheless loads left behind by tons of of hundreds of campers. And that falls to Atholl Lawson and his workforce.
ATHOLL LAWSON: They’re all volunteers. They arrive by like a herd of locusts.
FRAYER: He instructions a military of trash collectors, deployed day and evening, to empty 15,000 trash bins.
LAWSON: Paper cups, white baggage, cans go. We decide up the luggage.
FRAYER: Oh, it is colour coded.
LAWSON: Yeah, so…
FRAYER: They usually’ve received little grabber instruments and…
LAWSON: Yeah, little grabber instruments, a great deal of baggage. We have it all the way down to a effective artwork now, so…
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Copy that.
FRAYER: About 100 dump-truck-loads of trash arrive per day at a recycling facility that will get rebuilt on website every summer time, the place individuals in hazmat fits hunch over conveyor belts.
LUKE HOWELL: The entire waste that’s collected is being hand-sorted over at a conveyor belt choosing line.
FRAYER: Luke Howell is Glastonbury’s sustainability and inexperienced initiatives supervisor. His job is to arrange the location for the return of its full-time residents, a flock of dairy cows, inside every week.
HOWELL: Yeah, typically sooner. The pageant will end, clearly, on Sunday evening, and as individuals depart the campsites all through Monday. And I will be choosing up any random little damaged items of plastic, you understand, or wrapper or, like, a cigarette butt. After which we have now an enormous magnet on the again of a tractor, and that may undergo, and it’ll gather any metals.
FRAYER: To tug up any stray tent pegs that may get left behind. Now, the general public doing this work are literally volunteers…
SCARLETT LAKE: I am 27. I am a scientist in actual life, however right here I clear bathrooms.
FRAYER: …Folks like Scarlett Lake, a geneticist by day, who’s doing a few of the dirtiest work right here in change for a free pageant ticket. She’s joined by Rachel Smith from the charity WaterAid.
RACHEL SMITH: We’ll see just a few scenes, you understand?
FRAYER: I am not going to ask.
SMITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. However yeah, we have robust stomachs, have not we?
FRAYER: These are Glastonbury’s signature long-drop bathrooms, which get suctioned out by tanker vehicles a number of occasions a day. Along with billing itself as sustainable, the pageant additionally ensures entry for all, together with youngsters and other people with particular wants. There are calm zones for neurodivergent people and wheelchair ramps for individuals like Karen Lamb.
KAREN LAMB: Properly, I’ve received a number of sclerosis, so I can not stroll far in any respect.
FRAYER: She navigates the greater than 1,100-acre pageant on a mobility scooter.
LAMB: These are the massive off-roader ones.
FRAYER: The tires are like…
LAMB: Sure.
FRAYER: …Kind of mud, all-terrain…
LAMB: And it is actually good as a result of it will get me about. I could not do that with out it, so…
FRAYER: She’s additionally received battery-powered flashing lights braided by her hair.
LAMB: Turns out to be useful later when it is darkish and also you’re attempting to get by the crowds to have one thing in your head that lights up so individuals see you. In any other case, I find yourself working individuals over (laughter).
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FRAYER: For now, that is truly one of many largest cities in southern England, but it surely’ll return to being a sleepy farm in only a few days.
Lauren Frayer, NPR Information, in Glastonbury, southwest England.
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