Attending a music festival in the UK is a bit like having children- I imagine- you know there's going to be a lot of stress, its going to cost you a small fortune and its going to be very messy but the rewards will be worth it and the memories priceless. Festivals in the UK are as renowned for their mess and muddyness as they are for any performances the bands put on.

Queueing to use disgusting toilets and abandoning your tent are as much a part of the festival experience as becoming best friends with strangers for three days. It's all part and parcel of going, which is something of a surprise as traditionally the music festival has been the brainchild and love of hippy tree-hugging types. However as the weed smoking flower children have grown up and got jobs in banking the new generation of festival lovers seemed to be more concerned with having a good time and getting off their faces than any great mission to help save the planet. The days of the guitar weilding long-haired hippy singing 'Big Yellow Taxi' as a group of ohm chanting beatniks sit around him- or her- are long gone.

However before we chain ourselves to the nearest bulldozer all is not lost, it seems that while the horrible, marketing-happy, faceless corporations may have taken over almost every festival and turned it into a chain store type franchise where you can buy a laptop and timeshare in Spain a lot easier than you can score drugs, there is still hope.

Festivals are actually making an effort to become greener, call it pressure from the masses, government influence, or just being fed up of clearing thousands of tonnes of tents and litter and not being able to do anything worthwhile with it, as Bob Dylan sang: "The answer is blowing in the wind" as recycling rubbish has become an important part of greener festivals.

One man who's managed to combine being green at festivals with making a few quid is James Dunlop who founded his own company myhab who recycle leftover festival tents into...wait for it....newer tents! Yes it really is that simple and if I do say ingenious. What James's company do, is provide a sort of rent scheme whereby you can rent one of their tents- which are already set up at a festival- for the event and then simply leave them there once its finished. Its such an obvious idea that i was a tad jealous I hadn't thought of it myself before he did.

At some festivals locals get involved in clearing up rubbish that is left over, much of which can be put to good use. Speaking after last years V festival Vicar Andrew Hetherington who represents a group of local churches said: "We're going to collect up as much of the stuff as we can make good use of - tents, airbeds, chairs and other camping equipment. We're here on behalf of a charity that works out in Romania and they can make good use of this."

I was at V festival this year and noticed that several initiatives were taking place- there was a stall for depositing unwanted tents and sleeping bags that could then  be recycled there were also lots of people earning money by collecting the paper cups- someone told me it was 10 p per cup- which were then recycled.

www.Agreenerfestival.com works to try and make festivals more greener- although that's probably obvious from their title- by promoting ideas such as lift sharing, recycling, lowering omissions from stalls and running competitions for greener suggestions by visitors to their site. Here's a video I found on their site which gives you an idea of some of the things they suggest.

It's not just in Britain the festivals are making a greener effort The European Festival Association works closely with festivals to try and ensure as much is done not only in terms of health and safety at festivals but also the environment.

While there is still a lot of room for improvement with more effort being made by not just environmental organisations but also festival organisers themselves, then maybe we are heading in the right direction- even if the tree hugging hippies of the sixties probably think its not enough.