Nathan ClareAs Life Festival quickly approaches, it’ll mark the start of the 2022 camping festival calendar. The setting of Belvedere House and Gardens is one of the many great spaces in Ireland where flora and fauna flourish. It is home to a huge plot of land consisting of woodlands, lakes, follies, and greenery that typically is a big tourist attraction all year round.
We felt that it is important to highlight ways to pack and camp sustainably to limit the amount of waste that is caused when attending festivals. Here are 5 tips to camping and packing sustainably at this year’s Life Festival.
Leave No Trace
This seems like a rather obvious thing to say, but not enough people were trying to do this in the past. It will always be difficult to leave no trace, it seems that something may be forgotten some way or another but we should all be making a conscious effort to, at the very least, clear the space that we used.
Sort and Recycle
Sort and recycle your rubbish. Bring rubbish bags to make sure that you can sort plastics, papers, cans, and bottles so that you and your friends around you can recycle any waste that you create at the campsite. You can reduce the amount of rubbish even further by bringing items and food that
have little or no packaging wherever possible.
Camping Gear
It is important to look for sturdy, strong camping gear that is made with quality materials. If you can find items that are made with good quality recycled materials that is a huge plus. An example of this would be camping tents made with 100 percent fully recycled materials. Other items would include the tents fly and floor. Ideally, you would want a tent that uses solvent-free polyurethane coating as it ensures the item was made without solvents in the production process. And of course, the most important tip in relation to camping gear is to look after your equipment, and of course, take your tent home once the festival has finished.
No Single Use Products
Single use products like cardboard and plastic are some of the leading contributors to environmental damage. Plastic bottles, straws and packaging is a huge threat to the environment and avoiding them when camping and in general is a brilliant way to cut down on environmental waste. Paper straws and reusable cups/bottles are a great alternative, try to move away from using all unnecessary plastic and cardboard items for festival season this year.
Biodegradable Glitter
We’ve all been there. You find yourself at a festival and you have glitter all over your body and in your tent, even if you haven’t used any yourself. Glitter sales soar during the summer with festival goers making up a huge portion of those sales, as it is a common accessory for many festival goers. Although glitter seems fun and innocent, it is extremely harmful for the environment. Companies like ‘The Glitter Bugs’ specialise in biodegradable glitter that microbes will absorb once it’s in the natural environment, causing no harm to the world around it. Their Instagram can be found HERE.
