Testing The Water At Glastonbury Festival
It’s June, the weather is all over the place: it must be Glastonbury Festival! Our water team are once again on site, working hard (they assure us!) taking water samples for analysis.
Single Use Plastic Bottle Ban
It feels more vital than ever this year, following the festival ban on the sale of single use plastic bottles. It’s hard to sustainably service a temporary population the size of Glastonbury Festival. Organisers are working hard to reduce the environmental impact of the event. Festival goers have been asked to bring reusable bottles, and hundreds of water taps have been installed for free refills. We really do applaud them for taking such a major step in reducing and reusing, not just recycling.
Making A Sustainable Festival
“We’re always thinking about how we can make Glastonbury more sustainable but the most dramatic change for this year is that we have banned the sale of single-use plastic drinks bottles on the festival site, ” says Emily Eavis.
“In the last few years we’ve all begun to see how simply recycling plastic is not really a solution. Single-use plastic is a huge threat to our planet. It pollutes our environment and its unnecessary manufacture consumes too many of our natural resources and contributes massively to climate change.”
“The best way to avoid plastic pollution and the wasting of resources that go into making it, is simply to reduce plastic use. With more than one million plastic bottles sold at Glastonbury 2017, we felt that stopping their sale is the only way forward.”
Shane and Lana, from our trusty water team, have been regularly monitoring festival water sources for the past few months. They are camping on site before and during the festival, taking hundreds of samples to send back to our lab at Chelston. The lengths they go to for their job! Margaret, Rita and Josh will be beavering away, performing thousands of chemical and microbiological tests. They’ll make sure that the quarter of a million population of the festival site have clean, safe water to drink.
Event Water Testing
All festivals should have a water testing regime in place, to ensure their guests have a safe water supply. Whether it’s a permanent supply or a temporary set up for the event, public health is a serious consideration. We’re proud to provide our expert services to Glastonbury Festival, and to other smaller events across the region. If you were lucky to get a ticket for this year’s Glastonbury or are attending another smaller festival in the South West, think of our team wielding pipettes and test tubes back at the lab!
Get in touch with the team for more information on our water testing packages: what tests are included and how to book us to cover your event, workplace or private water supply.