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Green fields
What: Shambala Festival Where: Northamptonshire When: 23-26 August Picture: Lindsay Melbourne
Shambala Festival’ s latest initiatives help give it the edge for sustainability
The event featured artists including Grrrl, Thom Ashworth and Oh My God! It’ s the Church., and sold out before a single act was announced.
Shambala is considered pioneering across Europe for it environmental practice. So far, it has reduced its carbon footprint by over 80 %, achieved 100 % renewable power and has become meat and fish free – to spark debate about the impact of industrial-scale food production on the environment.
Shambala is now well on the way to achieving its aim of being completely disposables free by 2020. They banned single use drinks sauce sachets and started using reusable bar cups in 2015. The audience are encouraged to bring their own reusable hot cups and those who don’ t are charged a levy of 30p per cup. This goes towards dedicated infrastructure, and getting the disposable cups recycled with specialist facilities. Furthermore, Shambala does not sell or encourage plastic glitter and is now even using reusable cable ties.
In 2017, the festival increased recycling by 25 % compared to 2016. And only 9 % of that waste was sent to landfill. This was helped significantly by a wastedeposit scheme which was repeated in 2018. An extra £ 10 deposit was taken from each group when festival goers purchased their ticket. It was then refunded when their bags of recycling had been brough to a central‘ Exchange’ and sorted by them correctly.
As part of this project, research was carried out on the“ non recyclable” waste to see what was left and whether any of it could be reused. The project, in conjunction with Grist Environmental, revealed that 33 % of‘ waste’ in the black bags can be recycled and showed that nappies, material contaminated with food, and packaging were prominent in the waste that cannot be recycled.
As a result nappy bins were provided to family campers in 2018. Also in 2018 steps were taken to address the waste that had been contaminated with food – ie the plates. It launched a first of its kind reusable plate service in association with‘ Less Mess’( www. leavelessmess. org), Unpackaged and the Sustainable Restaurant Association( SRA).
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