Sol Lee

In the UK, every year 23,000 tonnes of the stuffing material waste stream goes to incinerators and landfills. These stuffing materials are mainly from beddings from households, hotels, hostels, student halls of residence and festivals. Theoretically, almost 100 per cent of stuffing materials can be recycled. However it hardly happens because recycling is not profitable, and there are is law or policy to control this waste stream.

The 'six wallet generation' describes young people with active buying power, directed not at ownership but at experiences. Festivals are one of their regular meeting centres for shared music experience. After three days of a festival, there is often more than 130 tonnes of waste. Almost one third of this is textile waste such as tents, roll mats and sleeping bags. People throw them away because they are muddy, broken, too bulky and too cheap to bring back home. Festival organisers often have to clean for 20 days. The labour cost is immense. The waste stream increases every year. 

I foresee that festivals will no longer accept people bringing their own sleeping equipment because of waste streams and labour costs. Festival slogans will focus on reducing wastes and educating people about these problems. I designed a renting service system for festival sleeping equipment. Festival goers automatically reserve a set when they buy festival tickets. At the festival entrance people can pick up and return the sleeping equipment.