WHO:
Festovers aims to revolutionise the way festivals deal with leftover festival tents. We go into festivals to reclaim all the leftover tents, and then clean, repair, and repackage them. Some go to charity, schools, communities, and the homeless, and the rest are sold as cheap, environmentally friendly second hand tents.
It's helping eradicate waste, it's making people's lives easier, it's cheap, and it's environmentally friendly from start to finish.
Starting this year, we have already worked at Truck Festival in Oxfordshire. We collected 85-90% of all the leftover tents. Truck is one of the better festivals, only 250 tents were left, whereas at Reading/Leeds festival you can expect anywhere between 7,000-14,000 tents leftover at each!!
WHY?:
The average tent is the equivalent to approx. 8750 plastic straws or 250 plastic pint cups. Currently over 95% of leftover festival tents end up in an incinerator or landfill. This is unnacceptable.
A recent study showed that approx. 250,000 tents were left at festivals every year in the UK. The maths = 250,000 x 8750 = 2,187,500,000 plastic straws. Festovers aims to upcycle these tents saving tonnes of plastic from entering the atmosphere.
WHEN?:
Our first project ran from 25th July-30th July. We collected 80-90% of all leftover festival tents, collecting 214 festival tents. The average equivalent of approx. 1,872,500 plastic straws. AND equally 1.5 tonnes of potential waste saved from the incinerators, all to be upcycled. Next stage is the cleaning, repairing, and repackaging of these festival tents for charitable causes, community causes, and sale/rental. During this time we will be booking with other festivals for next year.
WHO ELSE?:
The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) launched its "Take Your Tent Home – Say No To Single Use" which aligns with the work that Festovers is doing. We are hoping to collaborate and work alongside this initiative to improve the way festival waste is dealt with.
We also collaborate with festivals themselves in order to educate people about festival waste, but also to provide a service of rental, collection, and sale, to make the lives of the the festival goers easier and more environmentally friendly.