Festival Freaks

Limiting the environmental impact of festival goers

Festival Freaks is brought to you by

Will, Will, Fin and Alfie, who are all in Year 7 at Newtown High School, John Beddoes Campus.

Tell us more!

What is your product and who is it for?

Our app is called Festival Freaks and the target audience is people who go to musical festivals and also the people who organise and manage the festivals.

What inspired your idea, and why is it important to you?

We all love live music and watch the musical festivals live on TV. We hope to go to one when we’re older. We noticed that there were thousands of people filling the fields. We all realised that if you have that many people in one place, there must be a lot of litter and waste to deal with. Online we saw images of the festival venues when everyone had left. We were shocked by the amount of rubbish left behind. There must have been tons of it. We felt that something could and should be done about it.

How does your product solve the problem?

The problem we will address is plastic waste (cups and bottles) and general rubbish at festivals. We are concerned that wild animals can get caught in plastic and injured. It is also terrible for the environment, especially if it all just gets sent to landfill.

How does it work?

Our app will use several features found on every smartphone. A GPS tracker, microphone and push-notifications. There will be two user modes - one for the public and one for the event organiser. The organiser will need to sign up to access admin modes. The idea is that there will be QR codes on rubbish bins and recycling bins all around the venue and in the camping fields. If you notice a full or overflowing bin, you scan the QR so the GPS can track your location. You then have the option of typing in a text message - such as “bin full”, or use the microphone to record a voice message. The message and GPS location will be sent to the admin users (management, people emptying the bins, security etc.) so someone can be sent to empty the bins and recycle. Our hope is that there will be a lot less mess and waste if it is dealt with regularly.

Meet the team

Why vote for Festival Freaks?

We are passionate about the environment and music festivals. We realise that people must have fun and do things that sometimes create a mess. Our team believes that looking after our planet does not mean giving up all of the fun things, but by striking a balance between doing things responsibly and always recycling and reusing as much as we can. We believe our app will allow the people at festivals, having fun, make a difference to the environment using one easy app. We are, after all, Festival Freaks!