Thousands of tents could end up in landfill after summer festivals, as the combination of bad weather and the availability of cheap tents has led to them being discarded by campers.

Organisers of Glastonbury festival said the situation with abandoned tents was "slightly worse" than last year because of the muddy conditions, with many thousands of tents discarded. The festival claimed putting tents in landfill is a greener alternative than the costly and labour-intensive job of trying to recycle them for further use.

A spokesman for Glastonbury said: "It's not a crime to leave a tent behind at a festival and I am anxious not to get angry with our customers. They go through an epic endurance and we don't want to undermine their positive experience of visiting the festival by whingeing at them. The fact is that we need to dispel the myth that overseas aid charities are going to want a load of cheap tents from Asda because they don't. And this is not a tent problem - it is a 'life' problem. If everyone didn't smoke and drink and party then clearly the whole job of clearing up afterwards would be a lot easier."

The organisers of Glastonbury, attended by 177,550 people and which finished last weekend, appeared to blame retailers for marketing cheap and poor-quality tents as "festival" tents which can be used once and then thrown away. It urged departing campers to pack up their tents and take them home, saying on its website: "A tent is for life not just for a festival. We want people to not just buy the cheapest tent, spend a little extra and buy yourself a tent that is going to last you a lifetime of camping experiences rather than just a festival or summer."

The annual headache of clearing up festival sites is expected to be more taxing than usual because of mixed weather forecasts. All the major festivals set out their green policies on their websites, including details of recycling policies and waste disposal and the use of volunteers. But campers are clearly ignoring their standard advice to clear up after themselves and take their tents home.

Halfords, Argos and Milletts are selling two-person tents for under £15, while Tesco Direct is selling a three-person tent for half-price at £20.

Ben Solanky, spokesman for charity Global Hand said there was scope for "better collaboration" between festival organisers, charities and organisations to redistribute tents.

After a pilot scheme at Festival Republic's Reading and Leicester festivals called Gimme Shelter, which urged campers to "donate not dump" their tents – which would be distributed to charities, Global Hand was invited to Glastonbury where it recycled a few hundred tents but has since decided to "step back". Solanky said: "We realised that we were not the best party because we were not festival organisers ourselves." He suggested that major manufacturers might think of developing tent hand-in schemes with money-off vouchers as incentives.

The V festival works with the Rotary Club of Great Britain who help collect what is salvageable to go to British Red Cross disaster emergency accommodation. However it says that there are not sufficient numbers of volunteers to help with the clear-up operations and large numbers of tents are going to landfill.

Bestival organisers describe tents as "large pieces of litter that cannot be recycled" and invite local scout groups to come and salvage what they can.

Glastonbury's Facebook page is littered with complaints about the waste. One said: "I came back with a free tent. The stuff people left behind was ridiculous." Another said: "I asked campsite crew for bin bags and they said 'We don't have any. Just leave it all, its what they're paid for', I was shocked!"