Post by ZWAI member Karolina Osak
With festival season kicking off across Ireland, thousands of us will be getting ready to head off for weekends of music, connection, and celebration. From the fields of Stradbally at Electric Picnic to the forests of Curraghmore Estate at All Together Now, music festivals are central to Irish summer culture. It’s easy to get swept up in the atmosphere, but once the music fades and the crowds clear, what’s left behind tells another story: trash-strewn fields, abandoned gear, and a system that still prioritises convenience over sustainability.
With this year’s World Environment Day highlighting the global challenge of plastic pollution, it’s the perfect time to ask: can festivals in Ireland do more to prevent waste, not just manage it?
The Footprint of Fun
Festivals are temporary cities with intense consumption. Over a few days, tens of thousands of attendees generate:
- Single-use plastic bottles, cups, and ponchos
- Food packaging and throwaway utensils
- Disposable vapes and personal care items
- Abandoned tents, camping gear and fast fashion
The issue isn’t just about overflowing bins, it’s about what’s left scattered across the fields once the music stops. Tents are often left behind after festivals, and one typical 4- person tent contains as much plastic as 8,750 straws or 250 plastic pint cups (BBC, 2019). Many of these items are impossible to recycle and end up incinerated or exported.
Last year, Glastonbury in the UK confirmed that 99% of tents were taken home by attendees, for the third year in a row (Mixmag, 2024). With over 200,000 people on site, this is a remarkable cultural shift driven by clear messaging, accountability, and attendee buying. By contrast, Irish camping festivals still see thousands of tents left behind each year. If a festival of Glastonbury’s scale can achieve this level of participation, why can’t smaller Irish events do the same?
While detailed national statistics on festival waste are limited, Ireland generated 3.19 million tonnes of municipal waste in 2022, with over 20% still going to landfill and another 41% recycled (EPA, 2024). This shows the need to tackle waste at every level, including festivals.
The Plastic Cup Problem: Is Reuse Really Working?
Walk up to any festival bar in Ireland and you’ll be handed a pint in a reusable plastic cup: thicker, branded, and meant to replace throwaway versions. While this sounds like a win for the environment, the reality is more complex. These cups are part of well-meaning efforts to reduce single-use plastics. But without the right return incentives, many don’t actually get reused. Deposits Too Low to Matter? In many Irish festivals, cup deposits are set at €1. While this is better than nothing, it’s often too low to encourage return, especially after a few drinks, or when people view the cup as a cheap souvenir. The result is that many of these ‘reusable’ cups end up in bins after a single use, defeating their intended purpose. By contrast, Boomtown Festival (UK) this year introduced a £20 eco-bond: attendees get their deposit back by returning two bags of recyclable litter to designated hubs. This higher-stakes incentive not only keeps cups in circulation, it encourages active participation in site clean-up and reduces overall campsite waste. If cups are not returned and reused, they can be worse than disposables. Reusable cups tend to be much thicker and heavier than single-use ones, requiring more material and energy to produce and clean. According to 2022 research, reusable polypropylene cups, a type of plastic commonly used for festival drinkware, must be reused at least 5 to 10 times to have a lower environmental impact than single-use alternatives (de Sadeleer et al., 2022, p. 9). Without a robust return system, their footprint increases substantially.
Green Shoots in Ireland
There are reasons to be hopeful. Passionate individuals are taking intitiative, such as Pip Sheridan at Found in a Field. Applause for Pip! Some Irish festivals are making changes too:
- Electric Picnic has taken part in Julie’s Bicycle Creative Green Certification, and in 2023 diverted 100% of its waste from landfill.
- All Together Now uses compostable packaging and works with Down2Earth for sustainable food service materials.
- Smaller festivals, such as Éalú le Grá (previously Body & Soul) have their own composting and recycling initiatives and generally generate a lot less waste (ZWAI recently attended with our Struvite Reactor, and we were happy with what we saw regarding waste disposal)
Initiatives like Friends of the Earth’s “Green Messengers” (now unfortunately no longer active for understandable reasons) and The Living Lab have also helped promote sustainability on-site. These projects use peer-to-peer engagement, creative workshops, and climate-themed installations to encourage better waste habits and environmental awareness. Their presence shows that when sustainability is made visible, social, and fun, festival-goers are more likely to get involved.
What Needs to Change
If we want to scale zero-waste practices at festivals across Ireland, we need:
• Higher return incentives: Raise cup deposits or introduce eco-bonds for broader waste return. Or better yet, tell everyone to bring their own cup!
• Clearer communication: Signs, bin labels, and announcements between acts reminding people to sort waste and “leave no trace.”
• Reusable infrastructure: On-site washing facilities and centralised cup return stations.
• Tent take-back schemes: Partner with retailers to offer discounts or incentives for returned tents. Decathlon UK’s 2024 No Tent Left Behind campaign offered full refunds for returned tents, a similar scheme in Ireland could cut down on abandoned gear.
• Policy support: Require green certification for large festivals: Introduce a mandatory environmental certification (like Julie’s Bicycle or ISO 20121) for festivals over a certain capacity to ensure baseline sustainability practices. Our friends at Native Events have the right idea too and have been working hard over the years to ensure sustainable practices at events across Ireland.
• Incentivise circular infrastructure: Offer grants or tax breaks for festivals that invest in onsite reuse systems (e.g. mobile dishwashing, biodigesters, or compost toilets).
• Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for festival vendors: This is a big one for us. Require vendors to minimise packaging and take responsibility for the waste generated by their products, in line with Ireland’s Waste Action Plan for a Circular Economy (2020–2025) and the Circular Economy Act 2022.
• Deposit-return integration: Align festival cup/token schemes with Ireland’s national Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for bottles and cans, to simplify and standardise returns across events.
What You Can Do
• Bring your own reusable water bottle and rain poncho- and return your festival cup!
• Take your tent home or borrow instead of buying new
• Support festivals that are actively reducing their footprint
• Like we always say in ZWAI, make some collective noise by putting pressure on policy makers!
Conclusion
Festivals are meant to bring people together in joy and connection, not to leave behind a trail of waste.
As we mark World Environment Day 2025, it’s time to reimagine Ireland’s festival culture in line with values of care, creativity, and shared responsibility. Making that shift will take all of us: organisers, attendees, vendors, and policymakers alike.
References
1. de Sadeleer, I., & Lyng, K. A. (2022). A life cycle assessment on single-use and reuse beer cups at festivals. Circular Economy and Sustainability, 2(4), 1517- 1539. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43615-022-00164-y
2. Environmental Protection Agency. (2024). Municipal waste statistics for Ireland. https://www.epa.ie/our-services/monitoring–assessment/waste/nationalwaste-statistics/municipal/
3. Iqbal, N., & Harris, B. (2019). Festivals claim the description ‘festival tent’ implies they’re single-use. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-48184756 4. O’Brien, T. (2024). Electric Picnic campsite remains heavily littered a fortnight after event. The Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/09/03/electric-picnic-campsiteremains-heavily-littered-a-fortnight-after-event/ 5. Ross, G. (2024). 99% of tents taken home after Glastonbury Festival 2024. Mixmag. https://mixmag.net/read/99-percent-tents-taken-home-afterglastonbury-festival-2024-emily-eavis-news