Analysis of the Negative Environmental Impacts of the Glastonbury Music Event It is clear that when large numbers of people gather in one place, this will have a negative impact on the local community and on environment. As the Glastonbury Festival is one of the largest music events in Europe, which gather about 140,000 people in one small area, it causes serious pollution problems, which include air pollution, water pollution, land pollution (Pow, 2009, p. 11) The most wide-spread pollution problems include the pollution of air from the vehicles’ fumes, noise pollution caused by vehicles which transport people to the event and music performed by the musicians during the Festival. Besides, the great problem is focused on waste pollution. It is found that the festival-goers usually left a lot of garbage in the fields (Watson, 2008, p. 1). The ecologist Sella Oneko discusses environmental impact of the Glastonbury music event in her article for The Ecologist.
She considers that a lot of new policies to minimize the negative impact of this festival have already been implemented by the festival organizers. For example, the festival’s Greenprint initiative bans to use plastic bags and encourages the distributers of the festival to minimize the distribution of leaflets. The festival goers are asked to take all unwanted items home and to use toilets, but not to seek bushes and pollute the soil. Moreover, it helps to raise awareness of festival goers and they will travel by public transport but not by cars which pollute air and create noise.
However, some festival goers still continue to leave garbage and to ignore the established rules (Oneko, 2011, p. 1). It is very important to find appropriate strategies in order to maximize the positive impacts and to minimize the negative consequences of the Glastonbury Music Festival.
It is recommended to develop the scheme that will provide “meaningful and effective environmental policies” which will help to control the traffic and transport, noise pollution, water conservation, waste and recycling, and so on (Glastonbury Festival, 2011, p,1). This scheme will help to maximize the positive impacts and to minimize the negative impacts of the Festival. Many festival goers will change their bad behavior during the festival. (Young, 2007, p. 21) Moreover, it is necessary to organize extra security and police patrols on the territory of the Festival activities in order to reduce the level of environment pollution (Glastonbury Organizers Claim Their Best Festival, 2003, p. 1) One more important strategy which should be employed by the festival organizers is based on raising public awareness concerning the negative consequences of the festival activities. It means that both the police officers and the representatives of the environmental organizations should educate all festival-goers about possible environmental pollution during the Festival.
Those festival-goers who ignore the established rules and continue to contaminate the environment should be fined. (Raj, 2003, p. 5) Another effective strategy which will help to reduce noise pollution in the area of the Glastonbury Festival is to motivate festival goers to reach their destination by public transport.
This strategy will reduce the great number of cars with their exhaust fumes and noise in the area of the Festival activities. (Oneko, 2011, p.c1) It is also recommended to use organic food during the festival and to ignore fat fast food and other types of food which cause the carbon footprint. This strategy will help to reduce air pollution in the area of the Glastonbury Festival. (Smithers, 2007, p. 1) It will be better to organize more environmental campaigns during the festival in order “to develop measures for preventing pollution”. In this case, it is necessary to work in collaboration with Greenpeace and other environmental organizations.
In conclusion, it is necessary to say that although the Glastonbury Festival is the largest open-air music event in Europe, it has a lot of impacts on local community and environment. These impacts of music event can seriously affect the quality of life of the local community. That is why it is of great importance to adopt appropriate strategies with the major goal – to get both social and environmental impacts of the Glastonbury Festival under control.
The festival organizers should not take into consideration only economic implications and ignore the local residents’ complaints and perceptions. The Glastonbury Festival attracts visitors from all over the world. Some festival-goers do not know about those terrible environmental consequences that the Festival can have. That is why the appropriate strategies to maximize the positive environmental impacts and to minimize the negative ones are of great importance.
