Join the team to tackle Plastic at the Picnic!

For the last 3 years, Friends of the Earth has brought a team of volunteers to Ireland's biggest music, comedy and spoken word festival - Electric Picnic.

Will you be part of it this year?

Here's the deal:

In return for volunteering each of the three days for 6 hours each day (the earliest you would be working is 10am, and the latest 9pm), either petitioning on the Waste Reduction Bill, working the Cup Refund Points or engaging festival-goers on what waste goes in what bin, you get -

• A free ticket to the entire festival.
• Free transport by private coach from Dublin (Merrion Square South) on the Thursday at 2:30pm, there and back (reimbursement if you take the bus from elsewhere in the country)
• Eco-camping
• A dinner on the evening of August 30th
• A free dinner with the other volunteers on the final evening

In return, you are required to:

• Attend one training session before the festival on either August 16th (6-8pm, Dublin) or 19th (1-3pm, Dublin)
• Camp with the rest of the volunteers in the eco-campsite
• Sign a volunteer agreement
• Pay a fully refundable deposit*
• Be over 18
• Supply all of your own camping equipment

Here's what the volunteers have achieved so far:

• 2015 - 60,000 plastic cups returned
• 2016 -139,855 plastic cups returned
• 2017 - 265,048 plastic cups returned

Festivals can be intense bursts of waste; 55,000 people in a contained area, eating most meals from food trucks. Beer cans often blanket the ground, melding with broken tents on the Monday morning to provide a perfectly shameful picture for every Irish newspaper.

But you can be part of a team to make Electric Picnic the greenest festival in Ireland. Imagine an atmosphere of care, responsibility, and shared respect for our natural environment. You can be part of creating that atmosphere, and the best part? As a reward, you will get a free weekend pass to the festival!

So, if you are enthusiastic and willing to chat to festival-goers about the need for a strong Waste Reduction Bill, help them figure out which bin their waste goes in, and be part of a real-life deposit return scheme in action, then we want you to join us from the afternoon of August 30th until the evening of Sunday 2nd September.

Sound good?

Apply to volunteer now!

Meaghan, Claudia, Oisín, Kate & Cara
Friends of the Earth

*We need to ask for a deposit because we can't take the risk that volunteers won't show up, we hope you can understand that! The deposit will be €150, to be paid in one instalment. If you cannot afford this, please get in touch with us as we don't want financial difficulties to prevent anyone from taking part.

Check out all of the media coverage we got from our efforts at the festival last year!

• An OpEd in Irish Sun on the Run On Sun Campaign on the day the festival opened
• A piece in Journal.ie
• A piece in Leinster Express during the event, encouraging festival goers to take their gear home with them
• A quote in Irish Times after the event proposing a tent deposit refund scheme for next year
• A post-event piece in the Irish Mirror on the waste problem
• Bonus media! A funny video filmed at the festival to promote our Run On Sun campaign, along with the opportunity to have FoE branding on main stage.