Volunteers were left to deal with rubbish “as tall as houses” that was abandoned at the Boardmasters festival.
One man estimated that 70% of attendees left their belongings behind – including brand new tents, chairs and mattresses, some still in their original packaging. Pictures reveal mountains of tents and waste left by some of the 60,000 festival-goers who descended on Newquay, Cornwall, this weekend.
Jay McGillan, 19, who was working at the festival with Oxfam, expressed his shock at the amount of rubbish left behind.
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(Image: Getty Images)
After the festival concluded, Jay spent four hours gathering up tents, pumps, mattresses and chairs – all in pristine condition. Jay believes that around 70 per cent of festival-goers left rubbish behind, likening the scene to a “landfill site”.
Jay, who hails from Bath, Somerset, and works for a design company, said: “The piles were as tall as houses, but it was just the scale of the rubbish that was insane.
(Image: Jay McGillan)
“There was a big construction team with a massive crane and they worked on them all night. There were bins the size of shipping containers all over the site with diggers constantly filling them.”
Jay expressed his shock as many of the items left behind looked brand new, so he took them home to recycle the material. He added: “I stuffed them in my car and did two trips there and back to get as much material as possible.
(Image: Getty Images)
“What was weird was I was hoping to find scraps, but I was finding so many camping chairs that were still in their bags and beds that looked brand new.
“Things were just sat there brand new, and I felt bad leaving it there and thought I’d take some home. It felt like a really strange thing to witness because of how Boardmasters relies on the British coast as a selling point for the festival.”
(Image: Getty Images)
It comes as long traffic jams infuriated locals and saw hundreds of festival goers missed their flights home. The queues and lengthy delays were blamed on a new traffic system which saw many people stuck for unexpectedly long periods, missing their flights home as a result.
A spokesperson from Newquay Airport told the Mirror: “The Boardmasters Festival is a significant event for our region, but unfortunately, this year the Boardmasters planning team implemented a new traffic management system that affected our passengers’ access to the airport without prior consultation with us.”
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