Festival Waste | Comp-A-Tent

Comp-A-Tent was born from seeing the mountain of waste left behind at music festivals. Our research discovered that more than 1-in-5 tents are abandoned at festivals, resulting in 750,000 tents headed straight to landfill or incineration across Europe.

The initial patented technology was a tensile-strengthened compostable polymer, which led to the development of the Comp-A-Tent; a compostable tent, that could be composted in industrial facilities. The project was a National Runner up for the James Dyson Award in 2017.

This further required a new business model - order online, collect on site, and return when you leave.

We worked with accelerators such as Enviu/Plastic Fantastic; the Royal Academy of Engineering and the UK Design Council to innovate and validate parts of the business model; received government funding through Innovate UK to research and develop solutions to festival waste; and collaborated with Festival Republic, Boomtown, waste contractors; Julie’s Bicycle to implement on the ground research and generate solutions.

We even stared on CNBC’s Pop-Up Start Up, in conjunction with Alibaba.