Having attended the very first Electric Picnic in 2004, your humble correspondent was, even then, older than the average attendee was in 2022. Which is to say, we were very much the old man out at this year’s edition. That being the case, the Return for Change campaign was lucky enough to enlist the help of some young volunteers (thanks to Laoise and Millie), to help lower our average age to a reasonable level.
Arriving well before the throngs, we were shown to our base for the weekend, the Jimi Hendrix campsite (many thanks to Jasmine, Sustainability Coordinator with Festival Republic). Positioned right at the corner of some crossroads, we could hardly have been better positioned to get the passing trade.
And what an amount of trade there was! With the organizers having created their own bespoke deposit return scheme for plastic bottles of water fair play, we focused our efforts on getting some cans for our troubles, and that was no trouble at all.
The weather was absolutely beautiful the first day and so was the mood of those present. With no rain-sodden tents and only a few hours’ worth of drinking under their belts, why wouldn’t it be? Unlike most other events we have attended, practically none of the festival-goers had ever heard of a deposit return scheme and those that had, had generally seen them when abroad. Regardless, the quickly grasped the concept and, to a person, declared it a good idea.
The weather, having given us such a wonderful first day, decided that it was time to turn on the taps for the second. It was quite the display! Where once there was only dusty, dry track, we were now treated to an increasingly slippy slip of slide, with all that fine festival fashion fantastically failing to keep people dry and/or upright. But, in testament to the boundless energy of youth, upward did they get and onward did they march, still taking the time to come over and talk to us.
Somewhere along the way, we lost count of the amount of cans we had collected but, last time we checked, it was upward of 1,000. Not that that was the main point of the exercise. Really, we just wanted to do what we usually do – talk to people and tell them about the deposit return scheme that’s coming down the road. Mission accomplished.