Following an excellent ‘harvest’ last year, the Bradford Metropolitan Food Bank decided to go scavenging again at Leeds Festival, in Bramham Park, near Leeds. There was considerable potential among the devastation left by the departing 80,000 music lovers.

With the aid of Bradford Rotary Club, and Venture Scouts from Wetherby, we collected almost a hundred large trays of food, noodles and beans predominating, plus a thousand unopened cans of alcohol. However, it was the overall impression left by the scale of the organisation that set me thinking seriously about what I had seen.

The fenced site covers hundreds of acres and it’s heavily littered with thousands of collapsed tents, scattered sleeping bags, food debris, discarded wellington boots and empty beer cans.

The temporary miles of metal boundary fencing are substantial, and zoo-like, to keep people out, or perhaps prevent them leaving early, and there were ranks of portable toilets as far as the eye could see. Looping above the lot were the electricity cables to bring power and light to the various facilities and performance areas.

The enormous stages were surrounded by rows of mobile homes, catering facilities and all the large trucks that had driven onto the site along artificially-constructed temporary roads. It was a mixture of the large refugee camps seen on tele, the aftermath of the battle of Waterloo, and a Nato base in Afghanistan.

On the one hand, the scale of the endeavour, is testimony to modern society’s ability to organise at this level, provided the funding is available. However, on the other hand, it’s a celebration of indulgence at a time in history when we are flush with fossil fuel and are discounting the future.

I can’t accept the level of waste involved with thousands of tents, sleeping bags, mat rolls and general camping equipment just abandoned, often in such a state that they can’t easily be collected for re-use as they are contaminated with ash from fires and discarded food.

Most of these products will be dumped and replaced next year with new ones, and that is seriously irresponsible in a world that is already abusing its finite resources. It seems almost certain that the many thousands of empty aluminium cans won’t be recycled.

In addition, there’s the problem of all the CO2 produced by all the festival-goers arriving at the site, and then dispersing to all corners of the kingdom.

I’m not totally negative about such festivals, but they certainly would be improved with a carbon tax that could help compensate for the bruising they cause to the climate.