Wickham Festival

CLIENT BACKGROUND

Wickham Festival is an annual music and arts festival held in the village of Wickham, Hampshire. It’s known for its diverse music lineup. It features a wide range of musical genres, including folk, rock, blues, country, and world music. It attracts both established and emerging artists, making it appealing to music enthusiasts with varied tastes.

The festival is praised for its family-friendly atmosphere and provides entertainment for all ages, including activities and performances aimed at children. Camping facilities are available, allowing festival-goers to stay on-site throughout the event and enabling them to fully immerse themselves in the experience.

In addition to music, Wickham Festival typically features a range of arts and crafts stalls, as well as numerous food and drink options including a variety of culinary choices from different cuisines, providing a wide array of dining options. The festival organisers have been making efforts to reduce environmental impact by incorporating recycling and waste reduction initiatives, and encouraging sustainable transportation options.

THE REQUIREMENT

When the previous waste management suppliers pulled out of their contract to service the event at very short notice in 2021, the Festival organisers saw TJ as the obvious choice to fulfil the services. TJ had previously approached Wickham Festival Organiser Peter Chegwin to tender for the contract, so when the previous contract holders were unable to fulfil their commitment, TJ was asked to step in.

The fact that TJ is local to Wickham, they are proactive on their approach to serve and that they’ve provided waste management services for the (much larger) Victorious Festival in Portsmouth for the past seven years were all positives. Peter was confident that having dealt with Victorious (as well as a number of other festivals in recent years), that they knew what was likely to be involved and would be able to provide everything that was required.

The contract requirements included:

• The provision of wheelie bins and ROROs (roll-on roll-off containers) to the festival site 
• Assisting the festival litter-pickers with exchanging full bins for empty ones, and emptying the full bins into the ROROs throughout the event
• Organising the daily removal of food waste and other rubbish from the festival site 
• Removal of the filled ROROs at the end of the event 
  

THE SOLUTION

TJ stepped in at very short notice in 2021 to deliver the waste management services that were required. The success of that initial contract led to the festival utilising TJ’s services in 2022 and 2023 also. 

TJ provided 90 eurobins, 2 ROROs, and the manpower to assist as needed throughout the event. All waste was consolidated and once the festival was finished, the TJ team removed the ROROs and bins from the site swiftly, taking all the waste back to their Tipner Materials Recovery Facility for sorting and onward recycling.

THE OUTCOME

Peter said: “I’m very pleased with the waste management service provided by TJ Waste, which is why we’ve worked with them for three years in a row and hope to continue doing so. The service is much better than that delivered by the previous company, with more bins, more manpower onsite and reliable daily waste removal. If we’ve needed something extra like an earlier provision of wheelie bins at the start of our ‘build’ phase, TJ has always been able to assist quickly and efficiently.

“It’s very important for our site to be kept clean throughout the event; our audience really notices this and comment favourably on how our Festival site compares to many other event sites they attend. Working closely with our own litter-pickers, TJ Waste and all their staff have delivered a really good service, often in difficult weather and ground conditions. I would happily recommend TJ to other event organisers – and have already done so!”

Find out more about the waste services we provide and the other organisations we work in partnership with…