Rob Curl

9 December 2010

Rob Curl is the Waste Manager at Glastonbury festival. Each year he's the one who has to deal with the mountain of rubbish left behind.

When did you start?

I've been here since I was 12. I used to work for a lovely old farmer. He died and the farm went up for sale. His widow said you can't buy it unless you take Rob on as Saturday boy.

I was effectively sold with the farm and I've been here ever since. 

Rob on how he got the job

Is Glastonbury green?

We have a good recycling rate and have partners in groups like Stop Climate Chaos. But we're a long way off being completely green. 

There's no way to bring over 150,000 people to Somerset and hope for it to be completely green.

Rob on Glastonbury and the environment

People used to come down with the same tent and clothes every year. They brought cans of beans and a few sausages. Since the late nineties virtually everyone buys on site.

But why leave it all behind?

Now everything is disposable: clothes, wellies, the whole thing. Thousands of tents are discarded.

Global Hand are taking tents away to re-use them this year, but the quality of them is so poor.

The biggest problem is that so much of the stuff is not easily recyclable, like all the cheap tents.

Rob on trying to increasing recycling

What's the answer?

Issuing everyone with a mug and plate and having cleaning stations. But we'd never get it passed the council because of health implications.

We've gone for the bio-degradable option, which works very well.

We did 230 tonnes of compost last year. In the past, most of it would have been polystyrene and gone to landfill.

Rob on tackling the trash responsibly

It certainly costs more to do the recycling we do - about £100,000 a festival.

It costs more to do the right thing?

Yeah, which is nonsense. The Government need to massively increase the price of landfill. They need to make it financially prudent to think about waste.

And they need to legislate and make companies think through the whole lifecycle of their products.

We're going have to get landfill charges well above £100 a ton before businesses start changing.

Rob on the Government's mixed signals

Memorable Glastonbury experience?

I used to collect the money from the gates. One time I had £250,000 in my rucksack and a million quid's worth of wristbands! It's all tickets now, so that doesn't happen.