It’s all hands on deck as we gear up to provide all the waste and recycling services for Carfest North, for the fourth year running The three day festival takes place at Bolesworth Castle in Cheshire, and raises valuable money for Children in Need and other children’s charities across the UK.
With the issue of waste at festivals remaining high on the agenda we’re pulling out all the stops once again to make sure as much of the rubbish generated at Carfest North is recycled, along with trying to educate and inform festival goers about the importance of recycling and sustainability. This year we’re setting 20 special recycling points up across the site with custom made bin toppers labelled with clear instructions on what goes into each bin. This is to increase the on-site segregation and also to get people to really stop and think about where their rubbish goes. We’ve also offered to present a session with all the traders ahead of the festival and very clear signage will be in place back of house.
With more than 5,000 camping spots this year, Gaskells will be handing out recycling packs to campers as they arrive which contain different coloured bags and clear instructions on what goes where, along with information on how everyone can help make Carfest North greener.
This year also sees the return of our specially developed character bins. General Waste, Gary Glass, Poppy Plastic, Candice Can, Freddy Food, Willie WEEE and Carla Cardboard form a ‘treasure hunt’ across the site, and provide answers to questions on seven different waste streams. Just a couple of examples of questions “How many plastic pop bottles would it take to be recycled into a fleece jacket?” “How many TVs are thrown away in the UK every year?”
Each bin provides the answer to these questions, and more facts which Gaskells thinks will not only help children understand more about the impact of different waste streams on the environment, but also their parents.
This is just a small part of what we’re doing at this year’s Carfest North as their preferred waste provider for the fourth year running. In 2018 we sorted, separated and recovered a whopping 120 tonnes of waste over the three days, with special on site segregation. All the waste was then brought back to their state of the art Materials Recycling Facility in Liverpool to be processed.
Over the past five years, Carfest events have raised more than £7 million for BBC Children in Need. This year they’ll also be raising money for a number of other children’s charities across the UK, including the Teenage Cancer Trust and The Rainbow Trust.
Our Commercial Director Denise Banks said “We’re proud to be supporting Carfest again this year as it raises money for such worthwhile charities. By recycling more, the waste costs to the festival are reduced which means more money goes to the children who need it. We’re also looking forward to General Waste and his troops ‘marching’ on Carfest again, as they really captured everyone’s imagination in their first appearance last year. We developed them especially to raise awareness of environmental issues in a fun way, aimed at children as we feel it’s important to get the message across to people at a young age, so it becomes a big part of how they behave in the future. Having said that though, last year we even had parents coming up to us telling us they’d learned a thing or two about different types of rubbish and recycling, which is fantastic!”