Challenge of material recycling at large public events

Large public events such as festivals, sports events or national celebrations tend to attract a considerable number of people. While some of the events are important sources of entertainment for the participants, such gatherings create a challenge to organize and maintain a functioning infrastructure.

Sound waste management is one of the challenges. Some preliminary results presented here, concern waste material flows at a large public event, illustrated on the example of Roskilde Festival (Denmark). Roskilde Festival is a large annual event, which attracts more than 120,000 participants and generates more than 2000 tonnes of waste over eight days.

In 2016, approximately 16% of the total waste generated was either recycled or sent to special treatment, the remaining (approximately 85%) ended up as residual waste and was sent to a waste-to-energy facility. While measures to promote material recycling at the festival have been implemented, our preliminary results suggest that there is currently large potential to recover additional materials for recycling and improve sustainability at large public events.