World News for Students of English

08-09-2021 07:00

Reading Festival came to an end; however, its environmental footprint is far from gone.

Around 100,000 people came to one of England’s biggest music festivals after the cancellation of last year’s event, and they’ve not only left the event, but left tons of plastic waste, including abandoned tents, used underwear, and condoms. Empty tents and litter were all over several fields in Reading, a day after the festival ended.

The discarded plastic tents could reportedly take up to 10,000 years to fully decompose in landfill, adding to the tons of other waste made by festival goers. The Association of Independent Festivals launched an initiative, calling for supermarkets and retailers to stop selling tents as single-use items. According to the association, around 250,000 tents are left at music festivals across the UK every year.

Unfortunately, tents are one of the worst things to recycle. In some cases, they go to charity. However, the ultimate message for festival goers is take their tent home. At the last event in 2019, more than 300 tents were saved and given to people in Reading.

Difficult words: environmental footprint (the effect that a person, company, or activity has on the environment), discard (to get rid of something that’s no longer useful of desirable), initiative (a new attempt to achieve a goal or solve a problem).

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