Harry Styles kicked off the live era of his new album Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally at Manchester’s Co-op Live on March 6. 20,000 fans attended the show, and no phones were allowed. It’s not that new, but what is new is that fans got disposable cameras instead. Twenty. Thousand. Disposable. Cameras.

Fans at the concerts had to place their phones into special bags for the duration of the show. This is something I first heard about when Jack White implemented it at his concert in 2018. Instead of taking a bajillion blurry, underexposed, and pixelated photos and watching the show through tiny screens, fans had the opportunity to enjoy the show and preserve memories.

The idea is a good one, in theory. As a photographer and someone who really enjoys concerts, I totally get the appeal. However, two major downsides are immediately obvious. First, this is 20,000 disposable cameras, the key word being “disposable.” We’re drowning in garbage as is, and this seems like a massive contribution to the entire islands of trash we’re surrounded by. The plastic body, the batteries, the chemical processing: none of it is particularly kind to the planet.

Another downside is that this is film photography on a very incapable camera, shot in pretty dark conditions. As you can imagine, many of the fans weren’t exactly thrilled with the results they got. Some of them got completely blank prints. With no phone photos as a backup, I believe the disappointment was gut-wrenching.

Now, the phone ban itself is something I support wholeheartedly. Being present at a concert is a gift, and we’ve collectively gotten terrible at it. But there has to be a better way to solve the problem than handing out single-use plastic cameras to everyone.

[Related Reading: RHCP guitarist annoyed by audience filming with phones, stops playing and films them]

Perhaps the artist could have several designated photo moments during the show. Or they could hire professional photographers willing to share images with attendees afterward (although this could be a tricky one, as it would be impossible to control who uses your photos and how). Still, one of these would achieve the same goal without the waste.

Harry Styles clearly cares about the concert experience, and I believe this idea comes from a good place. But I believe that it needed a more earth-friendly execution.

[via PetaPixel, The Mirror; lead image credits: Leticia Moraes from Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons]