Zombie Rubbish!
A team from the QMUL-led Resilience of Anthropocene Coasts and Communities (RACC) project spent a weekend at the Green Man Festival talking to festivalgoers about old landfill waste, coastal erosion and climate change.
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Through a “Zombie Rubbish!” stall featuring a wave tank, maps and other interactive activities, the team engaged more than 1,000 people, many of whom were unaware that legacy waste is a live climate-risk issue. Conversations even spread beyond the stall and around the festival site.
“Do you really think people will want to talk about landfills? At a music festival?”
When we told people we were heading to the Green Man Festival to talk about our RACC research, responses were often slightly sceptical. Landfills and legacy waste don't seem like obvious festival conversation starters.
Yet here we were, setting up our stall. Our gazebo was decorated with crisp packet bunting, garlands made from recycled textiles, and even a repurposed Christmas tree. Below our banner proclaiming "Zombie Rubbish! ...our old waste is returning to haunt us" Andy Russell was put the finishing touches to our wave tank.
And, before we had even officially opened, people were stopping to find out more.
Over the course of the weekend, a steady stream of festival-goers visited the stall. Some stumbled across us while passing by, while others were brought along by people we'd already spoken to. Our wave tank, designed to demonstrate coastal erosion, proved to be a fantastic conversation starter for visitors of all ages and inspired repeat visits from families. Alongside the wave tank, a mix of physical and digital maps, posters, and a selection of beach finds turned into a game gave people different ways to engage with our research and allowed us to tailor conversations to different levels of interest and understanding. Over the weekend, we spoke to more than 1,000 people and discovered that the majority had no idea that legacy waste is a live climate-risk issue for coastal places, public health, and environmentally sensitive areas. Andy also gave a talk on the science stage about the 200-year history of climate science and policy with a quiz embedded that linked key events with contemporary music.
One of our biggest surprises of the weekend came when we overheard people chatting about legacy waste elsewhere around the festival. Standing in queues we caught snippets of conversations that had clearly begun at our stall. It turned out that people really did want to talk about landfills after all.