The clean-up operation at Glastonbury has begun this morning (June 26), as crowds of litter pickers take to the fields to collect piles of garbage. Despite the festival's 'love the Farm, leave no trace' policy, it would seem many 2023 punters ignored this as pictures show all sorts of rubbish left strewn across Worthy Farm.
Tents, plastic bags, food containers and cans continue to get cleared from the site in Somerset after more than 210,000 people attended the five-day festival. This year's music extravaganza was brought to a close by headlining act Elton John last night, which marked the final UK show of his farewell tour.
Other highlights from the event's 51th year included headline sets from The Arctic Monkeys and Lana Del Rey. As well as Lewis Capaldi's emotional performance as the crowd supported him after he lost his voice and Lizzo making history by playing Mozart on the Library of Congress’ 200-year-old crystal flute.
But as with every Glastonbury-year, besides the incredible experiences and world-class acts, there's always something else left behind - rubbish. On the Glastonbury Festival website, organisers go into detail on the importance of not littering.
"We are passionate about reducing rubbish sent to landfill and ask Festival-goers to bring only what they need and leave nothing behind," a statement reads. "With over 200,000 people on the land during the Festival, it’s very important to minimise the enormous impact this makeshift city has on the countryside on which it stands.
"Since 2019, over 99 per cent of all tents have been taken home after each Festival. We are very grateful to our Festival-goers for their continuing respect for the land."
Around half of all waste created by Glastonbury Festival is reused or recycled. In 2019, more than 149 tonnes of food waste were turned into compost.
During the same year, the festival also recycled more than 68 tonnes of paper and card, 38 tonnes of glass, 57 tonnes of cans, 17 tonnes of plastic bottles and turned 14,000 litres of cooking oil into biofuel.
Many people on Twitter have already anticipated there to be litter left across the farm as festival-goers return to their homes throughout the day. JaSoltys wrote: "Looking forward to seeing how clean and 'rubbish free' Glastonbury will look, when all the nett zero/woke clan disperse today."
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Horsley262 added: "Having just seen images of the amount of litter and rubbish left over from Glastonbury, what a disgrace." BCollier2012 fumed: "Why do people leave so much litter at Glastonbury? It makes my blood boil."
