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A Day On The Green Responds To Claims It Under-Provided Hand-Washing Facilities

While going to the bathroom at a festival is never the most pleasant or clean affair, male patrons at A Day On The Green‘s Brisbane event last weekend found it particularly difficult to keep up basic hygiene due to the apparent lack of hand basins provided.

The festival’s Queensland leg took place at Sirromet Wines, and News Corp reports that although a number of fenced-off urinal only areas were provided in addition to numerous port-a-loos, patrons were not provided with additional basins, nor was there any signage indicating where users could go to wash their hands.

A spokesperson for A Day On The Green has defended the festival, insisting that organisers had provided a higher ratio of hand washing facilities to toilets than was required by local Redland City Council guidelines.

“There were 158 port-a-loos on site with more than 150 hand wash sinks,” the spokesperson told News Corp. “We have just started supplementing the port-a-loos with five-person urinals and had 10 of these on site at the weekend. The urinals did not have individual hand wash sinks but the number provided in the toilet area well exceeds the official requirement.”

While its not uncommon for Australian music festivals to provide urinal-only toiled facilities, many provide additional urinal blocks in addition with hand-basins for men to use. These were noticeable absent on the weekend.

A representative for Redland City Council has shifted the blame, claiming the council is not responsible for ensuring adequate facilities at the event because the guidelines used for were events with up to 5,000 people. Those guidelines, require that there should be at least 38 sit-down toilets, 25 urinals and 34 hand basins at such events, and last weekend’s festival saw upwards of 15,000 attendees.

While the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Regulation has since said that the council should ultimately take responsibility and provide adequate regulation for festivals to use, the spokesperson for A Day On The Green has said that the festival will consider providing basins in their dedicated urinal area in the future.

“Our site team are constantly talking to our suppliers to improve whatever we can for patron comfort at the event so yes, it is something that could be discussed for the future,” they said.

Last weekend’s event was headlined by American singer-songwriter James Taylor and UK band Simple Minds, while Don Henley from Eagles will perform at several of the festival’s dates in March.

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