The efforts of volunteers turned what could have been a massive amount of waste into a heartwarming donation after Reading Festival last year, the BBC reported.
Like many large festivals, Reading Festival, with its 90,000 attendees, has a trash problem. Many festivalgoers leave junk behind when they depart — and that includes completely usable items such as clothing, boots, air beds, sleeping bags, tents, and canned food, per another BBC report.
All those discards could end up in a landfill, but dedicated volunteers sort through the trash to find treasure, which they use to fundraise for charity.
And this time, they had a special cause in mind for one particular type of discarded item: towels.
During their week of cleanup efforts, volunteers set aside the towels they found for the Oxfordshire Wildlife Rescue, which rescues between 3,000 and 4,000 animals yearly, including everything from small birds to deer. According to founder Luke Waclawek, towels serve multiple purposes at the rescue, the BBC shared.
"Towels come in for all sorts of uses in handling the animals," Waclawek told the publication. "Sometimes covering an animal with a towel also calms it down and they make a fantastic cheap bed for them."
He shared that the rescue is always in need of new towels, saying: "About four weeks ago, there was a count of 150 [hedgehogs] in the centre. That's 150 towels a day." Waclawek added that sometimes used towels must be discarded because of the risk of infection.
"When Elisa [Miles, chair of the Warren and District Residents Association,] brought over the towels for us, it was fantastic," Waclawek said, noting that he was "incredibly grateful."
Volunteers were pleased to be able to make a difference.
"To be able to give something to people and do something out of the mess that was left is nice," Miles said, per the BBC. "So it doesn't just all go to landfill and the stuff that is reusable is used."
Other enterprising groups have repurposed festival trash into clothes and merchandise in an effort to raise awareness for the same problem.
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