Glastonbury Festival has warned that the event could get shut down if people urinate on the floor, saying there’s a very good reason why festivalgoers should only wee in the dedicated on-site toilets.
Glastonbury is known – and loved – for the rough-and-ready experience it offers up, being a place where slipping and sliding through mud and not washing for days simply becomes part of the joy.
Going to the loo also becomes something of a humbling experience, not least if you’re brave enough to brave one of the site’s famed long drops.
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But while it might seem tempting to skip the queues (and the inevitable stench) by heading over to the bushes for a quick tinkle, the festival has warned that people shouldn’t ‘pee anywhere except in the loos’.
This is because urine can kill fish and wildlife in the streams and end up polluting Worthy Farm, the working dairy farm where the festival is held, with warnings that too much damage could see the site shut down altogether.
The website explains: "Peeing on the ground causes toxic pollution of the water table. The ground water runs into the central Whitelake River and down the valley for miles around. Wildlife and fish are affected if 200,000 people pee everywhere.
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"The Environment Agency tests the water regularly, and has the power to close down the site if too many people have urinated and polluted the site. It really could be the end of Glastonbury if you pee where you shouldn’t. Please only pee in our thousands of toilets and urinals."
There are several types of toilet available on site, including the 2,000 lockable open-air long drops that are billed by the organisers as a ‘Glastonbury Festival tradition’.
There are also more than 1,300 compost loos where you can sprinkle sawdust on top of the waste - which, after a year, turns into 'wonderful compost' that gets brought back onto the farm.
As well as those, there are portable toilets, a number of disabled loos and more than 700 metres of male urinals.
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Better still, there are now even female urinals, which are looked after by WaterAid volunteers ‘who are also on hand to assist newcomers’.
“There are two of these sites for 2022: one at the bottom of Hen House Lane by the Pyramid Stage and one in the Kings Meadow (Stone Circle),” the Glastonbury website says.
“Both female urinals will have two compost toilets set-up with washing facilities inside so that reusable sanitary products can be cleaned and used.”
All toilet points have either hand washing or hand sanitiser facilities, while environmental health students check the areas twice a day to ensure things are ticking away nicely.
Featured Image Credit: Alamy/AlamyTopics: UK News, Glastonbury