Shropshire Star

Volunteers clear up V Festival debris - in pictures

A huge clean-up operation was under way today as an army of volunteers worked to remove mountains of debris, including thousands of tents and sleeping bags, left at the V Festival site at Weston Park.

Published

A team of more than 300 people from across Shropshire and Staffordshire arrived at the park yesterday evening, with a further 200 expected today to continue to clear rubbish left by the 85,000 revellers.

The campsite inside the grounds of the stately home was left strewn with debris.

  • Click on the edge of the next picture to start the gallery

Revellers consumed hundreds of thousands of pints of beer over the course of the weekend and as well as tents, the site was left littered with cardboard, cooking equipment, fold-up chairs, food, cans of beer, lilos and even clothes.

The volunteers started the clean up process at around 4.30pm yesterday and expect to be at the park throughout the day today, clearing up the leftover tents, sleeping bags and other equipment.

Keith Gater, who helps organise the clean-up for Shropshire and Staffordshire Rotary Clubs, said up to 5,000 tents would be collected.

Mr Gater, a member of Brewood Rotary Club, said: "There are about 20,000 tents left on site and we hope we can get about 5,000 of them. We have a look at which ones are in a good condition and can be packed away easily and then they get put on a lorry which the International Aid Trust have here and they get sent all over the world."

The re-usable tents, sleeping bags, roll mats, chairs and wellies are collected and passed to the charity, which gives them to the homeless, and use them to set up tent villages for children and homeless people in Ukraine. They are also used in disaster relief areas.

Sorry, we are not accepting comments on this article.