Festival's sewage treated by ponds

Willows are grown on the wetlands to help process sewerage

With any large festival like the Big Green Gathering it is guaranteed that tonnes of sewerage is produced that needs to be taken off site to be processed.

Unlike previous years, this year's waste will be treated in a completely new way by using a wetland system.

Penny Kemp, one of the directors of the festival, said: "It works by having a series of ponds and as the waste goes in one pond you plant various types of reed or willow - all sorts of different plants that pick up all the nutrients.

"It then goes into the next pond and the same process happens again. I think there are four or five ponds at Fernhill Farm and what I've been told is that the water in the last pond is clean enough to drink."

Permanent feature

The system has been installed by the owner of Fernhill Farm, Andy Wear, who has worked with the system designer, Jay Abraham, from a specialist company called Biologic Design.

It has been created on a big scale so it can cope with the amount of sewerage produced during the festival and will be a permanent feature of the farm.

Penny already has her own wetland system at home but on a smaller scale and she is confident the system will be successful at this year's Big Green Gathering.

Sewerage will be removed from the loos around the site and pumped into the series of ponds, all of which will be closely monitored by the engineers and the Environment Agency.

"I've been assured by the designer [Jay Abraham] and the Environment Agency that it will work well which is the most important thing. They are completely satisfied it can deal with the waste.

"It's pumped into containers and then the containers put the flow into the ponds at a certain rate because the plants have to do their job as well."

'Nutrients'

Although some might feel the system is a little too close to home, Penny says it has one big advantage.

"It doesn't smell, it's anaerobic digestion so it's underground as the plants are taking up the nutrients from the ground. It's a huge advantage at festivals."

She also hopes that, as with previous years where people have picked up practical ways of lowering their carbon footprint in their own lives, wetland systems could also be adopted by festival-goers in the future.

"The village I live in has 5,000 people. I'm not saying you could have it for that which is spread out over miles but you could have it in small estates.

"There's no reason at all why, on a small scale, wetland systems couldn't deal with people's waste on estates and things like that - a bit like micro-generation where you can all get together and have different forms of alternative energy to power estates.

"It seems to be the way forward, we've got to learn with our own waste rather than chuck it away and forget about it."

The Big Green Gathering runs from 29 July to 2 August 2009 and guided walks around the wetlands are being planned so festival-goers can find out more about how it works.