One of my highlights of the year on the Greenpeace calendar is Glastonbury and this year’s 40th anniversary lived up to all expectations. As always Greenpeace had its own field which included some old favourites like the skate ramps, climbing wall and of course the solar powered showers (which apparently Prince Charles popped over to have a look at). There where also some cool new features as well like the Earth Dome stage.
The theme of the field this year was rain forests to highlight our Palm Oil campaign and after our recent victory with Nestle the focus was on HSBC and it’s investment in companies involved in deforestation (HSBC have now dropped their shares in Sinar Mas, one of the worst companies responsible for deforestation in Indonesian – So another victory!)
Rain forest theme
But it’s not all partying there’s work to be done around the site to keep the field running, we were lucky this year as quite a few members of our group got to go and all ended up doing a variety of different jobs. Some were part of the kitchen team who cooked all the great vegetarian and vegan food, one of us was part the Green Traders team who went round the festival to seek out traders who have had the lowest environmental impact and give them the Green Traders award. This year I was part of the site crew and in particular acting as security on the gates to our secure camping area.
Then of course there’s the music. For me the highlight had to be the Levellers on the Glade stage with Funkadelic and Toots & the Maytals a close second. It wouldn’t be Glastonbury without seeing all the random sites and watching all the random bands in small tents, then to finish / start the day there’s the all-night madness at Arcadia and Shangri-La. Best described as a crazy party in a distant dystopian future with lots of fire and drum ‘n bass. The icing on the cake was the beautiful weather and sun.
Tree shaped climing wall and the Earth Dome stage
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