Glastonbury Festival is not just one of the world’s most iconic music events – it also happens to showcase how innovative humankind is in the 21st century when it comes to toilets.
One of the major challengers the organisers face is how does a temporary city home to 210,000 people for six days deal with sewage.
The answer is with a groundbreaking, sustainable and thoughtfully designed sanitation infrastructure. Over 4,000 toilets are supplied in a number of formats catering for accessibility needs, location, sponsorship and status.
I mean, you cannot expect Olivia Rodrigo to use long drop toilets like the rest of us whilst she plays the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, can you?!
Long drop toilets – the Glastonbury Festival Classic
Long drop toilets are a Glastonbury Festival Classic. And they do exactly what they say on the tin. Literally being long drops.
Lockable, roofless cubicles are built over large pits dug into the ground. To use a long drop, you simply lock yourself into said cubicle, sit down on the seat provided and let everything drop into the hole below.
There is no flushing and the pits dug are deep enough to last for the entire festival. To avoid odours building up, every long drop is cleaned at around 11am each day.
Regular festival-goers know to time their morning toilet visit for just after 11am, knowing that is when a long drop will be at its freshest. Relatively speaking.
Over 2,000 long drops are scattered across the Glastonbury site. And really, you cannot say you have experienced the Festival properly unless you use one. At least once.
Compost toilets – green and humane
Compost toilets now account for 1,300 of the loos around Glastonbury. They come with separation mechanisms, allowing waste to be composted responsibly following the Festival.
After a festival-goer has completed a number two, sawdust is thrown down the toilet to reduce odours. It makes the whole toileting experience less smelly and more pleasant than a long drop.
Compost toilets are further enhanced by often being adorned with artwork, trees or flowers. “Living loos” is how WaterAid refer to the compost toilets they supply.
And for any festival goers who firmly believe in sustainability, they offer a sense of satisfaction afterwards of helping towards the sustainability of the farm.
Waste from compost toilets is turned into fertiliser and used on-site months later; when the rock stars and music-lovers have given way to cows and pigs.
Portable toilets – once popular, now on their way out
Traditional chemical portable toilets were once the bread and butter of Glastonbury Festival. But not anymore. They have been phased out over recent years for a number of reasons.
The first being sustainability. Glastonbury is trying to rid itself of plastic as much as possible. So giant plastic toilets all over the site do not fit in with that mission.
Secondly, chemical portable toilets have become impractical as Glastonbury has grown. They have to be flushed before and after use. They often clog.
Leading to those ‘Pyramid of Poo’ headlines which dominated the news cycle as much as the music during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
And being trapped in a tiny space – sometimes with no light – into which thousands of people have already expelled their own waste can be a pretty soul-destroying experience.
Certainly compared to the open air, less claustrophobic feel of a long drop. And the all-round better ambiance of compost toilets
Urinals for men and women
There are over 700 metres of urinals spread throughout Glastonbury. 2004 saw urinals for women introduced. These have increased in popularity over the past two decades.
Seven dedicated women urinal units from Peequal can now be found around key zones of the site. Since the 2022 Festival, over one million uses of Peequal units have been recorded.
Urinals reduce queuing times compared with sit down toilets. They also offer eco-benefits. The urine collected is reused in processes such as nutrient recovery for fertiliser.
Disabled and accessible toilets
Glastonbury has wheelchair accessible and standard accessible toilets across its campsites and close to viewing platforms for all the main stages. There are also changing place facilities with hoists and electric beds in the accessible campsite.
These disabled and accessible toilets are locked. To qualify for a key, festival-goers must register before April.
Luxury flushing toilets at the Glastonbury Festival
Luxury portable toilet trailers are located in paid-up glamping areas like Worthy View and Sticklinch. Highlighting it is very much a case of you get what you pay for when it comes to the Glastonbury toilets experience.
Those in the posher areas will find trailers with flushing toilets, sinks, lighting, mirrors and other fixtures and fittings.
Needless to say, luxury portable toilet trailers are much cleaner than anything else on-site. But that comfort comes with an extra cost.
And there are also the queues to consider. With these units limited and only in specific areas, they become busy at peak times.
Bonus facilities and secret toilets at the Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival is famed for secret places you only stumble across by walking through some trees and surprise acts playing unannounced sets.
The mystery extends to toilets too. WaterAid delighted festival-goers with its ‘Toilet of Dreams’; a disco-balled, music-playing loo built to highlight global sanitation challenges.
Before his 2025 Legends Slot on the Pyramid Stage, Rod Stewart took time to design a box-shaped leopard print toilet.
Another collaboration with WaterAid, it will play Stewart hits like Sailing and Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?. Those taking a couple of minutes away from action to relief themselves might even be interrupted by a specially recorded water-themed message from Stewart himself.
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