The show's over, so it's time for the big Glastonbury clear up

The giant Glastonbury Festival clean-up began yesterday as an estimated 1,650 tonnes of waste were swept from the fields.

The process will take more than three weeks and involves a team of 300 litter-pickers sifting through items including mobile phones, car keys, musical instruments and tents.

This year's figures are still unknown, but last year's revellers left behind 54 tonnes of cans and plastic bottles, nine tonnes of glass and 11 tonnes of discarded tents.

Festival organisers said the number of tents left behind this year stretched to the ''hundreds, not thousands", unlike the 15,000 tents reportedly abandoned in 2007.

After litter pickers have removed any visible items, the 600-acre site is then turned over with machines to dig out any items which may have been trodden into the mud.

Cows grazing the site at Worthy Farm for the rest of the year have died in previous years after eating stray tent pegs left in the ground.

Festival spokesman Crispin Aubrey said: ''We haven't had a chance to count the items left behind yet, but an extraordinary collection of items are always abandoned.

''This year we have an enormous number of mobile phones, car keys, money, musical instruments and tents.

''We recycle as much as we can and have already had a number of requests from Scout troops and voluntary organisations for any camping equipment left behind."