With so much in the news recently about the environmental impact of festivals – we’re looking at YOU, tent-ditchers - we’re thinking hard about how we can enjoy festival season without placing any unnecessary strain on our land and seas.
TENT
Hot on the agenda right now is how we use our festival tents – and crucially, what we do with them when the party’s over. Especially when they’re caked in mud and you’re feeling a little jaded. Certain retailers are selling extremely cheap, flimsy festival tents and marketing them as single use items, as festival-goers in their hundreds of thousands simply bin or abandon their tents when the festival is over. Many revellers leave their tents behind misguidedly thinking that a charity will come along and repurpose their tent for the homeless or for refugees abroad – this is an urban myth! So what to do? Borrow a tent from a friend, hire one to take with you - or invest in a proper, hardy tent that’ll see you, your friends and your family through years of festivals and camping trips. A single-use festival tent is the ultimate false economy.
CUP
Festivals like Glastonbury have WaterAid stations all over the festival site for festival goers to fill their bottles from, and plentiful taps all over the camp sites. Aside from being CRAZY expensive to purchase bottled water at festivals, it creates colossal amounts of waste in the form of single use plastic, which we all know we should be cutting loose from our lives.Chillysand Swellget our thumbs up for stylish stainless steel bottles which keep hot drinks hot (morning coffee on the go!) and cold drinks cold (hello large, portable G&T!), but perhaps our favourite water bottle of them all is the WakeCup. Made from sustainably sourced bamboo, 10 per cent of profits go to The Marine Conservation Society and Plastic Oceans, and the bottle can be personalised if you’re not into sharing…
FASHION
A festival weekend is a chance to paint our faces, parade around in fancy dress (or nothing at all!) and generally feel LIBERATED from the 9-5. This is the place that many of us will try out new looks that we’d not necessarily rock on a daily basis, so the impulse to buy fast and cheap fashion might be there. We understand – festival tickets are really expensive. But try to resist the lure. Ask yourself the question, ‘who made my clothes?’ when you’re browsing those eye-wateringly cheap slogan T-shirts, sequined hotpants and landfill-plastic accessories… and move on to your nearest charity shop or car boot sale to find a statement festival piece you’ll be dusting off year after year. Ethical fashion for the win.
FESTIVAL BAG
With all that money you’ve saved on throwaway water bottles and flimsy tents, treat yourself to a festival purchase that gives back in more ways than one. Our new range of bucket bags are woven by women of the Kamba tribe in Kenya, and each one is unique and one-of-a-kind. With a drawstring closure to keep all your festival essentials in one place, these woven basket bags are the ideal size for wearing all day long, and they’ll last many seasons to come. The ultimate antidote to fast fashion, these bucket bags are made from wool from recycled jumpers, and they take up to four days to weave. Basket weaving has become a vital source of additional income to these people, whose livelihoods otherwise depend on the unpredictable nature of agricultural work. Even the brass bead rivets are made from recycled and sand-casted scrap metal: an income source for artisans living in the Kawangare slums of Nairobi. Shop the collection here and snap up your very own piece of tribal craftwork.
Are you taking your beloved basket off to any festivals this summer? Tag us @thebasketroom and use the hashtag #mybasketroom to help us spread our story far and wide!
