Reading Festival organisers Festival Republic have said they considered banning plastic bottles but it would be more difficult at Reading because of: “plastic bottle wars where 50 people on each side throw semi-full water bottles at each other in the arena”.

Noel Painting, who works in health and safety at Festival Republic, said: “The concern is the potential for injury if we have non-plastic, heavier bottles full of liquid”, reported The Reading Chronicle.

Mr Painting was speaking at a meeting of Reading Borough Council’s Housing, Neighbourhoods and Leisure committee, where a 5,000 increase of Reading’s capacity to 105,000 was approved.

Councillor Brenda McGonigle called for the council to “follow Glastonbury’s lead” and ban plastic bottles, though Councillor Ellie Emberson praised the festival organisers for improving the level of tent recycling. She said that adverts promoting this on big screens had made a big difference.

The meeting heard 50 per cent of paper cups sold at Reading 2018 were recycled and that ‘minimal’ traders were using polystyrene.

Festival Republic rejected calls from the council to implement front-of-house drugs testing, such as that provided by The Loop. Mr Painting said: “We don’t like front-of-house testing for various reasons. Back-of-house happens, where we take the drugs off people and test them. Front-of-house seems to be condoning drugs.

“The risk of drugs is not to be underestimated because we do not know what they are taking and they do not know what they are taking.”

Councillor Graeme Hoskin, lead member for Health and Wellbeing, said the council will continue to push for the serivice to be implemented, commenting: “There has been really strong evidence around the benefits of front-of-house drug testing.

“This is not about condoning drug use. There is both increasing evidence around decreasing drug consumption and protection of the public but also about being able to increase the messages of harm and risk.

“We would like to continue discussions with Festival Republic because it is something that is working elsewhere and increasingly the police, public healthcare professionals and local authorities are starting to see real benefits to .

“We can’t pretend it doesn’t exist at Reading Festival. That would be living in a fantasy world.”

Mr Painting said the festival is looking to increase the size of its street pastors tent, provide more equipment to safety hubs and increase safeguarding in general.

Reading Festival have been approached for comment.

Main image credit: Jack Cheeseborough / (CC BY-SA 4.0)

