Another fine mess

Oxegen left Punchestown more scarred than a battlefield, with more Dutch Gold than an Amsterdam jeweller, but are we too quick to judge the young music fans? asks Róisín Ingle.

THE THINGS Irish Times letter writers get their undergarments in a knot about. This week, there was righteous indignation and shock concerning the 80,000 Oxegen-goers who left assorted debris behind them after a festival which, by all accounts, was more successful and well-organised than ever. But there's no pleasing some folk: "If a picture tells a thousand words, the photograph on page 3 of Tuesday's edition, showing countless abandoned tents, sleeping bags and camping chairs, as well as other human detritus speaks volumes for the attitudes of today's Irish teenagers towards money, material possessions, hard work, the environment and their own self respect," fumed Gary Morrissey. "Who said the recession couldn't come quickly enough?"

Oh, Gary. As Jesus said, let he without sin cast the first empty two litre cider bottle. Cast your minds back. To Féile in Thurles in the 1990s, Lisdoon, Lisdoon, Lisdoon, Lisdoonvarna in the 1980s and (heaven forfend) the pope's youth rally in Galway in the 1970s. The latter may have yielded paper flags, bunting, plastic egg sandwich wrappers and glass bottles of milk, but papa-related litter is still litter, you know. Where one or two young people are gathered in the name of the pope, Planxty or the Prodigy, a couple of things hold true: litter gets dropped and "teenagers" get accused of being disgusting.

It may have escaped some people's notice that the crowds at Oxegen were made up of more than teenagers - rumour has it some of the music lovers were as ancient as 25 - but there are other factors at play here.

Look closely at Brenda Fitzsimons's post-Oxegen photograph. No matter how hard you look, you'll not find a single litter bin. Empty bumper fig roll packets? A solitary brown boot probably lost due to over exertion during Holy F**k's set? Yes and yes. Receptacles in which to place your empty cans of finest, cheapest lager? Not a one.

Oxegen veteran Lorelei Fox-Roberts (19) from Longford says she brought some of her rubbish home but that it was inevitable that Punchestown was going to be transformed into a temporary tip.

"People who give out should know that there weren't any bins to put rubbish in and when the rubbish was cleared up, it was put outside black plastic bags near the portaloos so it just got strewn around the place again," she says.

"Young people do care about their environment. In this case we weren't given a choice, there were no facilities and no incentive to leave the place clean."

Anyway, messiness and festivals go hand in hand, according to Mark Shelley of Tangerine Fields, the accommodation company that provides pre-prepared tents and caravans at events such as Oxegen and Glastonbury, although Oxegen, he says, is "as bad as it gets". He says it seems to yield more abandoned festival furniture - chairs, tents and sleeping bags - but in litter terms it's on a par with other big gatherings.

"We have one guy working for us who is an ex-army guy, and he says the aftermath at festivals such as Oxegen, Reading and Leeds is messier than some battlefields he's seen," says Shelley.

It's not all bad. At Oxegen more than 100 Scouting Ireland volunteers (teenagers all) spent the weekend helping to clean up and gathering about 1,000 sleeping bags and some tents to pass on to various charities. Garrett Flynn of the organisation says young people at the site were enthusiastic about filling the skips provided with their used sleeping bags.

"I work with a lot of teenagers and I have to say their standards of cleanliness do generally leave a lot to be desired," he says. "But then my mother reminds me that I was far from perfect myself when I was a teenager.

"I think we are too keen to jump on teenagers in this country when in fairness there are slobs of all ages, and when you go to other festivals and concerts the same litter exists. I'd say there was quite the clean-up after Neil Diamond and Bruce Springsteen. It's a bit rich of people to pick on teenagers."

Still, surely it wouldn't happen at one of your posher festivals, such as the upcoming Dysart in Co Kilkenny or the favourite fest of more mature punters, Electric Picnic in Co Laois. Except it does. As one commenter on Jim Carroll's On The Record blog put it this week: "I can't wait to leave behind empty Beluga containers and an assortment of extinguished half-smoked Montecristos when I depart the Electric Picnic site. I'd say the cleaners will be glad to handle that kind of upmarket crap rather than Dutch Gold cans and Star Bar wrappers from the Oxegen oiks."