ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Thousands of volunteers took on the task of cleaning up after this year's Glastonbury Festival the day after the event had finished.

Despite being asked to take all their belongings home with them, revellers left behind empty food and drink containers, gas canisters, items of clothing and other waste. But there was significantly less rubbish around this year than in previous events according to litter-picking manager Bronwen Rashad.

"There has been a huge change in public behaviour and people mostly use the bins provided," she said. "Around 98 per cent of visitors now take their tents home with them. And most of the rubbish left behind can be recycled in any case as there's much less plastic used on site now."

The five-day festival took place at Worthy Farm in Somerset. Volunteer litter-picker Rachel Aggitt agreed that there was much less littering at this year's event. "It's very satisfying when it's all clean and the team were in good spirits, with lots of us finding fairy wings to dress up in," she said.

Tractors are brought to the site to carry the waste away after the litter-pickers have concluded their work.

There appeared to be more rubbish left behind after last year's Glastonbury Festival when hundreds of tents, plastic bags, food containers, laughing gas canisters and drinks cans needed to be cleared away.

And in 2022, volunteers had to remove several larger items from the site including camping chairs, blow-up mattresses, inflatable toys, a paddling pool - and even a grandfather clock which was found near the Pyramid stage.