Summer festivalgoers have left our fields in disarray – it’s time to tax the vandals hard

Greta Thunberg has arrived in New York by boat to attend next month’s UN conference on climate change at a time when 85 per cent of the UK’s population say the issue concerns them.

In some quarters, the message doesn’t seem to be getting through, quite the reverse – after more than 100,000 music fans attended festivals at Reading and Leeds recently, organisers were forced to clean up hundreds of abandoned tents.

Cans, food wrappers, plastic bottles, sleeping bags and tents were strewn around as if there had been a disaster, not a celebration.

Environmentalists reckon UK festivals produce about 23,500 tons of waste every year, the majority of which goes into landfill, and after the Notting Hill Carnival last weekend 200 cleaners worked through the night to help remove over 300 tons of rubbish.

Why can’t revellers wear a rucksack and take their detritus home, like good walkers do? Pollution isn’t confined to musical events. As wild camping (in remote places with no facilities) continues to grow in popularity, so does the problem of rubbish.

I’m visiting the Highlands shortly, where litter bins in popular spots are crammed to bursting, and abandoned tents, booze cans and cooking stoves are a common sight in pilgrimage sites like Glen Etive.

Clean Up Britain is calling for a tent tax of £25 on every festival ticket, to be returned when the fans return home carrying their tent. This won’t work in open country. Camping isn’t always great for the countryside either – trees get hacked for kindling, rivers used as open toilets and moorland burnt by illegal fires.

I’d ban all camping outside official sites, unless people are prepared to pay £100 a day. Call it a land tax or a countryside levy, hard cash is the only way to educate these vandals who claim to love the natural world.