Overview
What with Kmart selling tents for 20 bucks these days, festival grounds across the country are often left looking like enormous rubbish dumps for canvases, poles and pegs after the festivities are over. For many people, taking down a tent just isn’t worth the hassle — especially when it’s cost them next-to-nix. It's a pretty disturbing phenomenon, given that we are (or should be) sorta worried about the fact that we’re killing the natural environment right now.
Enter KarTent: a 100 percent recyclable tent made of cardboard, created by a Dutch startup. We’ll get straight in and pre-empt the most obvious question: cardboard? How’s that going to fare in a mud-fest? Well, according to the company’s site, the KarTent is guaranteed to keep you dry throughout a three-day deluge.
Besides that, the tent’s most spruikable aspect is its friendliness to the environment. A regular tent can’t be recycled easily, but a KarTent can go straight into the nearest paper recycling facility, making the post-festival clean up easier, quicker and more sustainable. Cardboard’s other benefit is its decorate-able-ness. You can go to town drawing pictures on yours, or get KarTent to print any photos or messages you want to adorn your temporary home. Or festival organisers can buy a whole stack and cover them in sponsor messages.
At this stage, KarTent is in pilot mode. It's been tested at a few festivals in Europe, but the company is looking for “adventurous” and “spirited” types to get involved. They haven't appeared at any Australian or New Zealand festivals yet, but if you want to make it happen, you can get in touch over here.
Via Pop-Up City.