Hundreds of tents, campchairs, and many other items have been left at the Electric Picnic campsite in Stradbally

Several camping essentials are among the hundreds of items left at the Electric Picnic campsites in Stradbally.

A clean-up operation has been underway since this morning, with the Festival Director, Melvin Benn, hoping to have the site cleared by 3pm.

Tents have been blowing around the site in Laois, while rubbish, bottles, and cans have been left all over the ground.

A homeless charity in Laois, PATH, will be collecting some of the sleeping bags that were left behind and will give them to people sleeping rough.

Volunteers will collect as many sleeping bags as they can fit in their vehicles and then clean them before giving them out to people who need them.

The group has appealed for more help this year to salvage the EP sleeping bags.

In an appeal on social media, PATH said: “If you have the time to help we would be so grateful if you could take a sleeping bag or two to wash and dry for us. Who knows, maybe some of our followers might own a laundrette?”

The sleeping bags collected at Electric Picnic this afternoon will be brought to Laois Shopping Centre on Thursday evening, September 3 at 6.30pm where volunteers will pick them up to clean and dry them.

These freshly cleaned sleeping bags will be returned to Laois Shopping Centre the following Thursday, September 10 between 6.30pm and 7.30pm.

On the mess left behind in campsites, festival organiser Melvin Benn said: "I’d love people to take every single thing home and leave no trace.

"They do it in the eco campsite but they don’t do it everywhere else. That’s sad to me but it’s part and parcel of what festivals are. We clean up after them. The farm, the land returns to what it was, the sheep continue to graze here.”