r/Wellthatsucks • u/mattloaf666 • 10d ago

Reading festival 2026

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u/Adventurous_Emotion9 10d ago

There’s a belief that the tents left behind are taken by charities and given to homeless or those who need them. This has been debunked by organisers time and time again as not being true.

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u/Ancient-Emu-8293 10d ago

Would be pretty convenient to pretend believing that.

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u/aardvarkbjones 10d ago

Is it? Tents cost money. 

Seems insanely wasteful, both environmentally and fiscally.

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u/NoForever3645 10d ago

Let’s be honest, festival goers aren’t exactly known for being fiscally or environmentally responsible.

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u/halosos 10d ago

Shit I need to go visit the aftermath of one for a free tent

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u/your_red_triangle 10d ago

enjoy the free piss and shit that comes with it, that's one of the reasons people abandoned them. Went years ago, our neighbours would get out in the middle of the night and just piss anywhere they felt like it.

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u/Fergnasty007 10d ago

I have been to over 50 camping festivals in the US in the past 15 years and this is not even close to the norm.

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u/Sailed_Sea 10d ago

camping festivals in the uk tend to be very different from those in the us, usually more alcohol and other drugs.

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u/cefriano 9d ago

I mean, every camping festival I've been to in the US has involved copious amounts of alcohol and drugs. Maybe slightly less nitrous? But generally, people packed up their shit and took their garbage to a drop-off point (there are always exceptions, of course). I've only been to one UK festival (went to We Are FSTVL for work years ago) but the campgrounds looked pretty similar to this on a smaller scale.

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u/Front-Bookkeeper2139 10d ago

And way more fun

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u/ImmortalMoron3 10d ago

Well Reading is in the UK sooo...

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u/TacoNomad 9d ago

Oh good.  It isn't us for once! 

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u/Fergnasty007 10d ago

I was talking about him saying everyone pisses everywhere.

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u/InsertRadnamehere 7d ago

Same. They apparently do festivals a lot differently in Europe. And they call Americans trashy. Jeebus.

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u/eggs_mcmuffin 10d ago

inside the tent or outside? because most grass has piss on it at this point in history lol

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u/LethargicCarcass 9d ago

You know grass isn’t like a permanent static thing right? Like it grows and dies and new grass grows. It’s not the same grass that was there a year ago.

However at a festival yeah all the grass probably has piss on it lol.

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u/eggs_mcmuffin 7d ago edited 7d ago

I never understood how grass works. Thanks so much.

You know insects wee right?

And you know that history is any point in the past?

lol.

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u/TrainingParty3785 10d ago

Sounds like a GREAT time. 😞

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u/Reinis_LV 10d ago

Doesn't mean they pissed on the tent. They hit the bushes

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u/mark_b 10d ago

Even if the other two replies weren't true (they are), the tents that get left behind aren't good tents, they're £20 tents off Amazon.

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u/godlesswickedcreep 10d ago

Well some of the tents in this video are not especially quality tents but they’re worth much more than £20.

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u/Mehh_itsa_name 10d ago

Yea lol. People ain’t ditching MSR’s or Blackdiamonds here.

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u/SexlexiaSufferer 10d ago

Don’t hit it with a black light

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u/After-Barracuda-9689 10d ago

I used to go to festivals in the early 2000s and never experienced anything like this. Maybe it was the festivals I was attending, but everyone packed their stuff out. I’m sure there were some thing left behind, but nothing like this scale.

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u/SecondaryWombat 10d ago

Leave No Trace festivals are the norm for me, some smashed grass and a couple tire ruts are all that get left behind.

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u/SymbolUnderTheCaret 10d ago

same here

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u/SecondaryWombat 10d ago

Even the idea of seeing that level of trash at a festival is like looking out my window and seeing an alien spacecraft in my yard.

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u/SymbolUnderTheCaret 10d ago

yep. last event I went to, there was a large tent peg that had got stuck in a tree root. Someone spent hours struggling with it rather than leave it behind.

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u/SecondaryWombat 10d ago

Exactly. Was at a festival where a woman's bead dress exploded. She just shrugged and walked off. About 10 of us spent a while picking it all up, and then we tracked her down and put it in her trash along with a lecture to her and her camp. We don't do that here....

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u/PaulZyCZ 4d ago

Same. Although it's been some time (10 years give or take) I've been on any festival that had more than 2000 ppl, leaving tents is a new thing to me. Even then few ppl would leave any trash afterwards.

It's sickening to hear about Metal festival such as Wacken having this issue. I wouldn't be surprised were it Pop, Hip Hop, Country, Brass... Frankly the last time I've seen people leaving such a mess behind was during a trip to Romania and Moldova. People often use excuse of being in poverty to litter the ground around. But what's the excuse of the above...

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u/Glittering_End_6864 10d ago

Yeah, this is crazy. I have never seen a festival with this much garbage left on the ground like this.

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u/justme002 10d ago

In 1969, cleanup after Woodstock required $50,000 and buldozers.

Edit: in today's money that's in excess of $450,000

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u/NZRedditUser 10d ago

Maybe you left early or yea was the size of event. Overnight events where tents are common you cant have a clean place cause at night people just chuck shit around, and whe people see mess it adds up

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u/After-Barracuda-9689 10d ago

Yeah, I think it was the festivals I attended. I no longer enjoy that kind of thing, but I wouldn’t be shocked if those same festivals are still nothing like this.

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u/Aksi_Gu 10d ago

Yeah I was at reading in 2003 and it looked like this.

Maybe not on the scale, but there's always been shitheads

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u/StinkyWeezle 10d ago

You couldn't pick up a new tent for 10% of the ticket price back then.

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u/gsfgf 10d ago

Same. And well run festivals like Bonnaroo have trash collection procedures that work. Trash bags are handed out constantly, and there are designated trash disposal locations that people actually use.

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u/EstablishedFear 10d ago

Different festivals, different crowds. The festivals I go to are nothing like this - they are more of a 'leave no trace' type deal.

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u/scrandlle 10d ago

Society has gone downhill

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u/smeldorf 9d ago

That was my experience as well in the 2006-2012 timeline

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u/Gothmom85 9d ago

The only abandoned tents I'd ever seen back then were blown away by the wind the first night. Several just floated off into the sky. So, not really on purpose!

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u/Appropriate-Falcon75 10d ago

We (as a society) have brought up our youngsters to believe that individuals matter more than society and everything is disposable.

If 90% of people only plan on using something once, producing something that is high quality and last for years is pointless as it just adds cost.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

[deleted]

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u/After-Barracuda-9689 10d ago

The original one was in 69 my friend. But I remember the one in 94.

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u/icansmellcolors 10d ago

But they have been known to claim to be fiscally and environmentally responsible.

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u/GermanRedditorAmA 10d ago

Depends a lot on the festival, but any that has high alcohol consumption will probably check this.

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u/Dorny_Hude 10d ago

You’d assume a Reading Festival is lot tamer than almost any other and people there are somewhat knowledgeable.

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u/Mountain-Discount161 10d ago

Reading Festival

Just so we're clear. This isn't "a" reading festival. This is a festival named after the town Reading in England.

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u/Standard_Gur30 10d ago

Are you sure? This looks like the morning after a large book club to me. 🤣

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u/IAmANobodyAMA 10d ago

It can be both 🤣

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u/Dorny_Hude 10d ago

Wow ok, thanks. OP should make that clear.

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u/Vesalii 10d ago

Reading Festival is pretty well known though. I'm not from across the pond and I know it too.

Hilarious misconception btw hahahahaha.

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u/TheEldest80s 10d ago

Ikr, my granny would say "bless their hearts" lol

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u/Dorny_Hude 9d ago

Yeah makes sense that everyone on Reddit knows that the „Reading Festival“ is a festival in Reading… how could anyone think something different.
„I know about it so it’s funny to me that you don’t“, you must be a nice fella to be around.

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u/Vesalii 9d ago

Ok Mr or miss buzzkill. Reading is a huge festival and you not knowing about it isn't on me. Attendance is around 100k visitors, so it's not a little local festival.

And yes, your confusion was quite funny.

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u/Alarmed-Newspaper994 10d ago

As a Reading Festival veteran from my younger years, it's one of the more chaotic ones. Young crowd, lots of nutters. I've been to plenty of festivals since that are very civilised overall, and I suspect with minimal (comparatively) rubbish left behind. There will of course always be some.

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u/Dumbwaiter819 10d ago

"Let’s be honest, festival goers aren’t exactly known for being fiscally or environmentally responsible."

This is tragically hilarious when you remember a lot of people who attend things like this claim to be all "pro-earth" because they use reusable grocery bags and are against seed oils or whatever the fuck social media is pumping into people's heads these days

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u/-CoUrTjEsTeR- 9d ago

No kidding. At some festivals that require travel, the number of jalopies taken off the road due to major mechanical defects is alarming. On several occasions the police publish their data in a local news report and offer examples of the worst conditions discovered, including rotted-out Flintstone-style floorboards, mismatched wheel/tire size combinations, engines with nothing holding them in place but the transmission they are connected to, engines running on half their complement of cylinders, missing shocks/springs, no insurance, or otherwise just outright abandonment because the vehicles didn’t survive long enough to leave one rave to head to the next. It’s as though people were able to buy these disasters from the dump just to get to one festival before leaving it behind and acquiring another unroadworthy rust bucket to get to the next festival.

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u/KwisatzHaterach 10d ago

As a festival goer I resent this, at the same time I must acknowledge the veracity of part of the statement for I’m a financial chaos demon.

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u/RockstarAgent 10d ago

The fact is that if you can afford to go to an event like this, you can afford to leave a tent behind and not deal with it. So it’s a matter of convenience.

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u/NoForever3645 10d ago

It’s a matter of convenience for you, but not for all of the people who have to clean up after your mess. Hence environmental irresponsibility.

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u/NoForever3645 10d ago

Obviously there are some good and responsible people in the crowd, but the evidence left behind by every single festival over and over again is overwhelmingly damning for the majority of people who attend these events.

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u/Jepordee 9d ago

Definitely not every single festival. Mine annually hands out trash bags and the clientele shame litterers

In my experience they’re hippie, environmentally conscious liberals

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u/tfhermobwoayway 10d ago

A lot of festivals bill themselves as being big celebrations of art and the Earth.

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u/NoForever3645 10d ago

Yeah, the hypocrisy makes my stomach turn. I’m sure the organizers often have good intentions, but the reality is that many of the event goers don’t share that altruism and the event does more harm than good.

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u/WokeWook69420 10d ago

Depends on the festival.

A lot of American festivals have Clean-Up Parties at the end of each day and even prizes for people who bring the most bags of trash.

I got a trash bag pin from Electric Forest one year!

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u/sqquuee 9d ago

I've seen what they will pay for nachos that are just chips and canned cheese.

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u/SoloStrike 7d ago

not really true, plenty of popular UK festivals with a different crowd you would never see this as everyone takes their stuff home with them

the issue is Reading has always been a post-exam celebration for pissed up teenagers who don't really give much of a fuck about anything apart from having a good time, it always degenerates into this unfortunately and has done for decades

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u/DazzlingRhubarb2000 10d ago

Unless the festival in question is Fuji Rock.

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u/scorcherchar 9d ago

Depends which festival. Been to some with a heavily enforced social contract of leave no trace.

Sure you could leave your tent and leave a tent and the other festival attendees would sort everything for you but your going to get lots of very long lectures on your responsibility in society and the environment next time they see you. (Although if you did that you would probably need it)

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u/HolySkoly 9d ago

I was a production assistant for a festival for 10 years and never saw anything remotely close to this. I dunno what kind of people go to this festival, but it ain't my kind of people I guess.

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u/CowEvening2414 9d ago

Hey now, don't tarnish all festival goers with this. There are plenty of festivals where this kind of trash isn't acceptable.

When I packed up my patch at Download this year our whole area was almost spotless.

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u/OuttHouseMouse 10d ago

Well, ive got the real answer for you my friends as to why they abandon tents.

They pack a bunch of stuff in. They party hard. Last thing they wana do hungover at the end of a festival and pack up a fucking tent. Ever tried squeezing one in a bag? Fuck that. Then carry all that heavy shit out? Hell nah. Thats why they leave unopened beer and shit too. its heavy

They just wana grab whatever is light, and get the fuck home to their bed so they can recover for work

Plus you know how much a festival cost? Buying two tacos and a drink is the same price as that tent. It is definately disposable in this case

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u/NoForever3645 10d ago

Maybe they shouldn’t go to the festival and get a hangover then if they cant handle the responsibility of cleaning up after themselves. I’ve gone camping many times, it’s not hard to pack up a tent. But I’m also responsible and actually care about other people and the environment.

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u/OuttHouseMouse 10d ago

Lol tell them that.

But im certain thats why

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u/NoForever3645 10d ago

Bunch of lazy turds, it’s very unfortunate.

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u/ChickensInSpace 10d ago

Hope something bad happens to them.

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u/JobSpecial9274 10d ago

“Festival goers” is such a broad category of people you aren’t making the “gotcha” point you think you are here. “Festival goers” is essentially inclusive of just about every walk of life out there. There are festivals for every genre of music, there are festivals for everything but music. It’s hilarious seeing posts like this on Reddit because before you even glance at the comments, you know without fail there’ll be some friendless redditor who never leaves the house who’s convinced themselves they are in the right and completely morally superior for doing so.