Almost half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, whilst nearly three-quarters of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture, and food industry account for at least one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The food on our (plastic-free, compostable) plates has far reaching impacts and is such a key element for greening lifestyles and by extension – also events as transformative spaces for human behaviour change. Here’s the work we’ve been doing on food and feedin’ ourselves and you for the past 2 decades…

Meat & Fish Free

80% of deforestation is for agricultural land, and of that land – almost three-quarters is used for livestock farming and growing livestock feed. For environmental reasons, we’ve been meat and fish free since 2016 – to spark the conversation about how our diet shapes the world around us. You can read much more here.

The estimated impact of taking meat off our menu is a massive 100 tonnes of GHG emissions per year! And in 2023, for the sixth year running, Shambalans overwhelmingly voted to keep the festival meat and fish free, moving forward. Even more incredible…. 33% of you reporting reducing your meat and fish intake since the festival – as changing human behaviour and activities is crucial in climate change mitigation, this is A C E !

Food Standards

For many years we have been taking significant steps to understand our food supply chain impacts, to move toward organic and regenerative sourcing, as well as providing good quality, variety and value for festival goers – a tricky balance. Our many food trucks onsite willingly work with us to adhere to serious food policies. They switched their menus from meat to plant-based, jump through ingredients and packaging hoops, and inspire us with their new solutions too!

All on-site food traders are required to:

Offer only plant-based milks for hot drinks – see our Gone Off Milk Report here.
Serve majority UK or European fruit & veg, and only Fairtrade bananas.
Use only or organic eggs, as free-range are no good.
Only serve Fairtrade (or equivalent) tea, coffee, hot chocolate and drinks.
Agree to not serve any Coca-Cola or Nestle products on site.
Only use non-toxic, biodegradable cleaning products.

Food Impact Labelling

We have been experimenting with food labelling since 2018, to create an evidence based and shared awareness around food impacts. Our quest is to move toward ‘one planet plates’ – low impact and ‘fair/equitable’ meals based on 0.5kg CO2e per meal, a global measure set by WWF research. And we’re nearly there!

In 2018/19 over half our traders opted into a trial to use a food carbon calculator and displayed labelling on their menu boards. We also did a detailed analysis of our crew food with the provider. Learning the real impacts of food has motivated many of our partners to design menus differently!

In 2023 our food traders worked with Klimato, to assess and display labelling for their dishes – keep an eye for scores on menus this year. In future we aim to assess and label 100% of meals, to enable us to track our overall festival food footprint, and enable festival goers to make choices.

Inspirational Traders

We recognise cafes that achieve the highest standards with our annual ‘Inspirational Trader’ awards. These are folks who are ultra-energy-efficient in their cooking, or doing inspirational things on land and farms they own or work with. See the 2023 winners here.

Raising the Bar: Our Drinks Offering

Where is your beer coming from?

9 out of the 12 beer and cider suppliers are based within 70 miles of the festival
62% of the beer on site (and 80% of the wine) is vegan

Unlike many events, we believe that everyone should be allowed to bring personal drinks into Shambala. We do, though, also rely on the bars to keep Shambala viable. Our bars are run with strongly held principals before profit margins, so please do support our bars and sample the scrumptious delights on offer!

We run our bars in partnership with our friends at Refresh West – a relationship that began back in the murky mists of time (also known as the nineties) when Joby (Refresh West founder) was causing mischief at UWE with one of our founders.

Refresh West have been responsible for all things booze at Shambala for eighteen years now. We’ve inspired each other, grown together and share the same values around quality, sustainability and sourcing. Together we pioneered the reusable bar cup scheme with us nine years ago – which has now been adopted by hundreds of events and venues across the country.

More impressively, we have also had zero single use plastics across all our bars for several years now – no mean feat, but it isn’t just about plastic straws! This is achieved in part by using ‘Think Drinks’ soft dispense on all our in-house bars, and supplying canned soft drinks to venue bars to avoid single use plastic bottles.

Sticking to your principles doesn’t come cheap, and by choosing to use the products, suppliers and systems outlined below does mean putting our values before profit– but we feel it’s 100% worth it to be able to serve you an amazing array of local, ethical and delicious independent drinks, and stick two fingers up to crappy, corporate flat lager!

Check out what was on offer at Shambala. The back bar and keg line is subject to change, but our commitment to this offering being delicious, ethical and eco won’t.

Soft Drinks at Shambala

Refresh West use ‘Think Drinks’ – a UK based company making premium quality soft drinks sourced from the most ethical suppliers they can find– a million miles away from your big American soft drinks brands.
It’s really important to us that no Nestle/Coca Cola products are sold on site – instead, Refresh West stock Green Cola. More on that here.

Beer

We pride ourselves on having a wide range of independent, ethically sourced and delicious beers and ciders.
The majority of our beer stocked at Shambala comes from Lost & Grounded Brewers who use 100% green electricity, recycle spent grains and carbon offset their travel to/from the festival via Ecolibrium.
We stock Freedom Brewery’s organic lager. Like Lost & Grounded, Freedom have very impressive sustainability credentials, and are located just 68 miles from site.
The rest of the beer comes from local breweries all within 25 miles of the event site – meaning we’re supporting local business and minimising transport carbon.

Cider

Our main Cider supplier (The Cider Box) offset the carbon from their transport by volunteering for The Orchard Projects – a charity that plants apple trees and rescues ancient orchards. They donate a days work for every 1,000 miles that their products travel. More on that HERE.
The Orchard Project champion community orchards and support communities to bring their benefits into towns and cities – improving wellbeing and helping nature to thrive. They are committed to reviving the UK’s rich history of urban orchards as a means to reconnect people to their food sources.
Our second cider supplier (Hogan’s Cider) not only makes some of the world’s best cider, but are also located within 51 miles of site and do lots of amazing work supporting charities both here in the UK and in Nepal.
To further reduce the carbon footprint of our bars operation, The Cider Box ciders are dropped off at the Lost & Grounded brewery and travel to site on the same trucks as our beer.

Wine

Our wine supplier (Sustainable Wine Solutions) is the ultimate sustainable service provider for the wine trade.
They are the only U.K. wine supplier working with reusable kegs and reusable cork sealed bottles which are cleaned and sanitised, reducing the carbon footprint by up to 95%.
They work with sustainably minded suppliers with many vegan, organic and biodynamic wines, filling our bottles and kegs here in the U.K. to greatly reduce their carbon footprint without scrimping on quality.

Vegan & Gluten Free Credentials

All our softs, ciders and all the wine except one, is vegan friendly
The majority of our ales and lagers are vegan friendly and we have a good selection of gluten free beers too.
The menu boards at all our bars will clearly label which beers are vegan and gluten free, so you can booze with confidence.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Refresh West also offset their travel and transport through Ecolibrium and source all their energy through Ecotricity. They also give a lot of support to Aid Box Community – a charity Joby founded, which supports refugees in Bristol and around the world – as well as supporting other homeless charities like Feed The Homeless and SleepPod in Bristol! Legends!

Massive props to the Refresh West team for all that they do – here’s to another 18 years. x