A CHARITY supporting refugees says it is seeing reductions in amounts of items left at Reading Festival following clean-up operations.
Herts For Refugees, which offers help to newly arrived refugees in the UK, recruits volunteers after the festival to help with the clean-up of the site for humanitarian re-use.
The operation is one of many which sees participants help with salvaging usable camping equipment such as tents, sleeping bags, and other items which attendees leave at the site, and giving them to refugees in need.
Angus Clark, CEO of Herts for Refugees, said: “We’ve been coming to the festival for about six years now, and we work very closely with organisers Festival Republic, and especially their sustainability team.
“We had a big team of volunteers this year– more than 100 volunteers on site, who we wouldn’t be anything without, so we would give our thanks to them for being absolutely fantastic.”
He explained: “We look for tents and sleeping bags as our priority, but we also take other things such as blankets or rucksacks if we find them, but those are most useful.
“This year we had about 1,100 tents and around 700 sleeping bags which were usable and were sent on to our distributors.
Speaking on the amounts of items left at the festival, Mr Clark said: “We’ve been there for six years now, and we are seeing numbers reducing.
“There has been a real improvement, especially over the last two years since the introduction of EcoCamps, which saw an expanded capacity this year of around 7,000.
“While it sounds like we took a lot away, compared to the roughly 90,000 capacity of the festival, it’s quite small.
“And like other festivals, Reading is seeing improvements, and we hope that will continue, but the real emphasis is on individual responsibility for those attending to take their items home”
As for how the salvageable items are used, he explained: “The stuff we pick-up is absolutely life-saving.
“Of course, we would much rather people didn’t leave their things, and there are ways to support us such as donating tents to us directly afterwards.
“But we distribute through our frontline partners, which took place on Sunday.”
Among those who see donations from Herts for Refugees are Mobile Refugee Support, the Refugee Women’s Centre, and Care for Calais, all of whom distribute items to refugees in need.
“There should be enough equipment for those organisations to help people through the winter months, when it becomes bitterly cold, particularly in northern France.
“So this stuff is absolutely vital for those people.”
He explained also why charitable support for refugees is more important than ever: “The political situation is such that small charities like us and the organisations we work with are needed.
“We’re a humanitarian organisation– for us, politics comes after that– but the situation these people are in is because of politics.
“And it’s worse now than when we started, due to the failure of both governments to deal with the situation properly.”
He explained: “If there were safe routes of asylum, we wouldn’t have to do it, it’s that straight-forward.
“We’re founding members of the European Human Rights Act, and it’s being undermined– refugees aren’t asking for anything different to the protection we’re all entitled to.
“And people seem to have pretty short memories: only as far back as the Second World War were we among those looking for shelter overseas in places like America and Canada.”
Reading Festival organisers also work with a number of other organisations to clean up after the event, as many festival-goers leave tents at the site, as part of its continued commitment to reducing its environmental impact.
The event has also signed up to the Vision 2025 pledge and is working towards a 50% reduction in event related greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 compared to 2014.
More information about Herts for Refugees is available via: hertsforrefugees.org/about/
For more information about Reading Festival’s clean-up operation is available at: readingfestival.com
