This essay attempts to understand the negative impacts of the Glastonbury Festival on a multitude of areas within British society by focusing on four main areas: economic; environment; politics and society. Through a critical evaluation of the festival, recommendations can be made to reduce its impact on its stakeholders. There is awareness that the Glastonbury Festival has had a negative impact on more than the four topics discussed below, such as the tourism industry around the festival site. The IHRCS (2010) report on music tourism at the Glastonbury Festival can be used for further training on this topic. . However, this essay will focus on the four impacts most publicized by the media and university staff. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'?Get the original essay The Glastonbury Festival began on September 19, 1970, with 1,500 people in attendance. The two-day festival headlined by T-Rex cost £1 with each attendee receiving a bottle of milk on arrival. Fast forward to 2017 and the festival has grown into a five day event with 175,000 people in attendance, tickets costing over £238, numerous acts and appearances from celebrities and major political figures (Glastonbury Festivals History, 2018). Tickets were sold online less than an hour before the concerts were announced. The Glastonbury Festival is the UK's largest festival and one of the best in the world (Hawkes, 2016). In 2015, Glastonbury earned £25.9 million, after making significant spending and donations to charity, the festival took in an average of £86,000 in profits (ITV, 2015). Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis has a modest salary of £60,000 and is a firm believer in donating to charity. The festival makes some of the largest donations each year to charities such as Oxfam and Green Peace (Ellis et al, 2017). Festivals have negative impacts on the region in which they are located as well as the people who participate in them. McDonnell et al (1990) stated that the impact of the festival depends on its size: the bigger the festival, the greater the impact and the more people there are. affected. Possible impacts can also be assessed through three main themes. Festival time [winter; summer; night; day], the location of the event [Interior; exterior] and the theme of the event [passive; music; policy]. All of this modifies the impacts and their severity for the stakeholders of this event (Jago and McArdle, 1999). Applying these techniques to identify the negative impacts of festivals at Glastonbury will make it easy to create solutions. The economic impacts of Glastonbury are mainly positive, contributing £1 million per year to local villages and the tourist economy and Eavis's large donations to charity are two examples of this. However, the economic impacts of Glastonbury are not all good. Firstly, Glastonbury has a long history of serious price inflation, both around the tickets sold and the stands inside. Since it opened in 1970 until 2016, the ticket price alone has increased by 22,700%, from £1 and a bottle of milk to £238+, which is a huge difference to airline rates. inflation in the rest of the economy which increased by an average of 3% per year (Simpson, 2016). This is common for festivals and it would therefore be difficult to find a solution, the price havingincreased drastically due to the growing popularity of the festival. If the inflation rate could be reduced it would benefit festival goers, but as long as they are willing to pay the price will continue to rise. The second issue related to the economic impacts of Glastonbury festivals is their exploitation of workers, after the last Glastonbury (2017) following Jeremy Corbyn's speeches on the importance of workers' rights, the organizers fired almost 700 workers, all under zero hours contract with little effort. without warning after only two days of work. These people had been offered more than three weeks of work to clean up the site, and many found themselves stranded on and around the site, without money and without housing, as many were migrant workers (O'Connor , 2017). This outright exploitation of workers' rights and zero-hours contracts has cost many of these workers dearly, as they have not been able to eat the money they need. Zero hours contracts as a whole are a form of exploitation and run a significant risk of being misused by companies, as employees have little power and often do not enjoy the same rights, wages or benefits as those benefiting from longer contracts (Sutherland and Canwell, 2004). To try to resolve this issue and ensure that Glastonbury cannot and will not exploit workers in the future, it would be recommended that all workers be given fixed-term contracts setting out how long they will work and what jobs they will be employed in. will be expected. TO DO. This type of contract is fixed in advance and gives employees the same treatment as those on a full-time contract, thereby limiting the possibility of exploiting workers (gov.uk, 2018). Doing so would protect both the employees and the festival who are legally obligated to uphold the established contract. Glastonbury also has a substantial impact on the environment, the festival's motto is “Love Worthy farm; leave no trace”, the festival says it is committed to recycling and the environment by encouraging festival-goers to take their waste home. They have also installed solar panels to power the stage, have over 1,300 recycling volunteers and are the world's largest donor to Greenpeace (Glastonbury Festivals Green Politicals, 2018). Despite these efforts to become a more environmentally friendly festival, Glastonbury still has a long way to go: in 2011, the waste left at the festival consisted of 400 kiosks; 9,500 roll mats; 6,500 sleeping bags and 3,500 inflatable mattresses (Gray, 2013). This has not improved over the years, in 2014 11.2 tonnes of waste were collected and in 2017 1,650 tonnes of waste including 5,000 tents were collected, part of this waste is recycled but a large majority is sent to landfill because the plastics used to create these products are not designed to be single-use and recyclable (Vonow, 2017). Disposing of all this waste cost the festival £780,000 and required 1,300 volunteers in 2017. This may not seem like a lot of money due to the £20 million profit Glastonbury makes every year, regardless or its impact on the environment. In 2014, the UK alone produced 202.8 million tonnes of waste, of which only 44% could be recycled and 7.7 million was biodegradable, producing high levels of methane to add to the high levels of carbon in our atmosphere (Government Statistical Service). , 2016). In 2010, Glastonbury released 42,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the environment throughoutof the year, thus contributing to the global warming crisis (Edwards, 2010). Glastonbury is looking to reduce its waste, the festival has painted brightly colored bins throughout the site, signs asking festival-goers to take out their waste and has a team of 1,300 people dedicated to cleaning up the site after the festival (Glastonbury Green Policy Festival, 2018). With this in mind, it would be recommended that instead of a solution of eliminating waste, it would be beneficial to increase waste recycling capabilities. Therefore, the proposal is for Glastonbury to use its influence and ask retailers to produce fully recyclable festival equipment, from tents to chairs to conveyor belts. Once this is implemented, the festival can begin allowing only festival-goers to bring these items onto site, thereby eliminating landfill. waste. This solution would take place over 5 to 10 years but would be a way of making the festival more sustainable and raising festival-goers' awareness of the importance of recycling. Glastonbury has high levels of pollution, while the festival uses solar panels to power stages and in 2016 banned the use of diesel generators on site for all vendors (Glastonbury Festival Green Politics, 2018). The biggest pollutant of the festival is the river. In 2014, Glastonbury was fined £31,000 for allowing its sewage to flow into the River Whit-lake. This incident occurred after an overflow tank burst. The festival did not report this incident to environmental agencies, but the incident was recorded by outside monitoring of the river during the festival. The festival was taken to court where it was discovered that a similar incident had occurred in 2010 which resulted in such a large fine (Environmental Agency). , 2016). The spill caused the death of the trout population in the river as well as 42 other species of fish, the reason being that when human urine decomposes it releases ammonia. Ammonia causes stress in fish, causing them to stop eating, mutations in their larvae and juveniles, and ultimately death. If a water source is exposed to continually high levels of ammonia, it can make the environment toxic, killing all marine life (Eddy, 2005). . It is essential that this problem be resolved. To do this, the festival needs to invest in more robust wastewater storage throughout the festival and large overflow tanks. It must also monitor river ammonia levels and report any findings to environmental agencies. Lawbreaking at festivals has become commonplace, most explicitly drug use, the rise of drug culture since the 1960s has meant that the user has moved from using marijuana to using " "dance drugs" such as ketamine and ecstasy. This is due to the rise of festival culture and the underlying theme that festivals are a safe place for illegal recreational drug use. While these types of drugs were primarily used by people living on the margins of society in the 1980s, their user base has transformed into ordinary young people taking a break from their 9-5 lives (Parker et al, 1998 ). Glastonbury has a strict drug policy on its website, stating that all attendees will be searched upon arrival and those selling and using illegal drugs will be arrested (Glastonbury Festival Drug Use, 2018). However, although this is “not tolerated” by the festival, they do, 2018)