Tents are the new single-use plastic – could cardboard be the answer?

As 200,000 people descend on Worthy Farm for this year’s Glastonbury Festival, you can be sure that plenty of brand-new tents will be shedding their wrapping and popping up for the first time.

For many of these however, it will also be the last time.

A shocking survey has revealed that 70% of people who bought a tent in the past five years have abandoned or binned it, while more than half of people have used it only once.

In fact, an estimated 250,000 nylon or polyester tents are abandoned each year – making camping equipment the new single-use plastic.

The sea of leftover tents at festivals across the world (and up Mount Everest) shows there is a big problem here, but one entrepreneur thinks she may have found a surprising solution.

Cardboard tents.

Yes, brown, papery cardboard, but not the type that turns to mush when it rains – which, less face it, happens a lot at UK festivals.

Tayla Evans, 21, developed her cardboard creation, called EnviroTent, to help tackle the issue of ‘tent trash’. 

The two-person tent is made of a water-resistant cardboard that can still be recycled, because it has no special coatings – just fewer surface holes. The firm reported it even survived four weeks in Tayla’s garden during a particularly rainy March, and says the tents are warmer in cold weather and cooler in hot weather than regular tents, thanks to the cardboard’s corrugated insulation. 

Working alongside sustainable packaging business DS Smith, which commissioned the survey, EnviroTent also ensures the tents don’t go to waste. After each festival, the company collects each one and recycles them into packaging for other companies.

‘The UK festival scene is amazing,’ said Tayla. ‘But it’s also an annual source of single-use plastic pollution, and increasingly, that is something people feel rightly uncomfortable about. Festivals should be guilt-free and fun.

‘I would love festival organisers to think really carefully about how we can help festival goers avoid tent trash – that is what EnviroTents is all about.’

Paul Clarke, a managing director at DS Smith, said: ‘When we met Tayla, we knew that cardboard could have a different and really important role to play in replacing plastic and reducing tent trash, and we are really excited for the difference we can make together so people can create less waste and have a guilt-free festival.’