It’s the time to think about the teeny tiny things we buy, as the world makes 100 billion new garments a year, and 350 million tonnes of plastic and nearly 2,000 tonnes of steel… Here’s what we’re doing as we consider the circularity of our consumption.
In 2023, we bought 79.3 tonnes of crew food and 33.2 kgs of gaffer tape – amongst a bunch of other stuff…. We’re telling you this because we are passionate about the particulars, barmy about bits and pieces and mindful about our materials…
The Recycling Exchange
We’d rather spend your money on music and art than waste and landfill tax!
The Recycling Exchanges have been incredibly successful over the past three years – thanks to your support and participation!The Recycling Exchange helps reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill by capturing as many separated materials ready for recycling as possible. Many hands make light work, and we believe it’s a positive thing to all be involved in managing our waste. Over 5 tonnes of recyclable waste are brought ot he Exhcnages each year, and through this – we achieve double the rate of recycling compared to the campsites! . We’ve also utilised the ‘polluter pays principle’, i.e. if you don’t muck in, you must pay for someone else to do it – and we’d rather everyone gets involved! So if you’re one of the 6,000+ of Shambalans who use the Recycling Exchange, please give yourself a massive pat on the back and bask in the knowledge that we think you’re totally brilliant.
How does the Recycling Exchange work?
Firstly, we’ve changed how we manage the process in 2023, so please read this even if you’re a Recycling Exchange veteran.
- When you buy your tickets you will be charged a one off £20 “Recycling Deposit”. You will only be charged this once regardless of how many tickets, or ticket types, you add to your booking – providing you use the same email address and Ticket Sellers account. This means you can add extra tickets to your booking at a later date without incurring additional “Recycling Deposit” charges.
- On arrival at the festival you will be handed two bags – a green bag for mixed dry recyclables (it says on the bag what to put in) and a grey bag for ‘other waste’.
- Separate your clean recycling from waste in these bags during the festival! And inspire your friends to follow suit…
- Take them down to one of our 3 Recycling Exchanges, during their opening hours.
- Then, either: Claim your £20 Deposit back – a refund will be made directly to your bank from the ticket agent, or… Collect a limited edition festival pack (while stocks last)
- It is estimated that refunds will be received by customers within 48 hours of the exchanges closing on the Monday, but this is very dependent on the particular banks of customers and approach to working days, especially as it is a bank holiday Monday. Please be patient. If there are any issues please contact TTS directly.
Note that anyone in your ticket group can reclaim the deposit or festival pack on their wristband with just a quick zap – isn’t technology wonderful!
Why do we do the Recycling Exchange?
About 70% of Shambala’s waste comes from the public campsites. Too much waste which could be recycled isn’t separated, and in the past has gone to landfill. Often the waste in the green bags are too contaminated ( i.e. not separated properly, or with food waste and gloops) to be recycled efficiently.
The initiative is designed to inspire everyone to take recycling into their own hands (quite literally) to achieve maximum recycling rates, make the festival site cleaner and reduce landfill costs. The site is now amazingly more clean because of this initiative! Unclaimed deposits are strictly ring-fenced for environmental projects at the festival, such as helping pay for the staffing of the Recycling Exchanges and increased infrastructure for recycling.
Compost Toilets
Compost toilets treat human waste and turn it into organic compost material, perfect for fertilising soil! They work by creating anaerobic conditions that facilitate the growth conditions for micro-organisms and bacteria that decompose the waste. This helps to destroy nasty pathogens, avoid water waste, limit the environmental impact and results in a product that can be used to fertilise soil. The beautiful flower planters on site (near the chair-o-plane) were actually grown using your.. well…ahem, yes. You get the idea.
Our Festival Build
We’ve been meticulously counting all the materials we use from screws to scaffolding, and the delivery vehicles and times to get it to site. IT’s been a herculean effort, but we working with new partners to get a clear Materials Flow Analysis for our beloved festival – to see what materials go in and what come out. You’ve gotta measure it to improve it!
Our Approach to Stuff
We are committed to moving to a fully ‘circular’ materials economy. We are designing out waste from our festival ecosystem wherever possible, and recycle as much as possible that remains. Recycling is great if the stuff already exists, and although it helps to avoid landfilling or burning waste, it’s a process that consumes energy and creates pollutants, and often down-cycles materials. We aim to avoid using resources and materials in the first place by encouraging re-use wherever possible.
After the show, our Green Team collect all useable surplus food from traders and donates it to a the local community fridge at Beth’s amazing EcoVillage in Market Harborough.
The Future of our Waste & Materials
We’ve recently released our ambitious Green Road Map, which sets our targets from now til 2025.
Specifically on Waste we’re aiming to:
Implement a fully circular ‘materials economy’ – designing out waste completely from Shambala. No waste from the build, no waste from the break, and no waste from the audience.
Of course this is easier said than done, and totally impossible without your help! Being ‘circular’ means all raw materials are either reused, repaired or recycled into something new. The main things we can do to tackle waste, is change our mindset, in two ways:
- How we approach shopping, avoiding plastic and waste.
- How we approach recycling and find ways to recover and reuse the materials we do buy.
What Can You Do?
We encourage all Shambalans to really think about what they bring with them each year – let’s reduce the amount of unnecessary “stuff” on site. We provide an amazing, local, zero-waste snack truck the Refill Roadster on site, next to organic fruit and veg for all Shambalans. We hope this can enable those who can, to buy food on site and reduce plastic packaging from convenience foods as much as possible.
We’ve been working on going PLASTIC FREE for a long time. Can you help us save space and avoid these pointless plastics with the following guides:
+ Glitter – all that glitters is… unfortunately pretty damaging for the environment. Even the ‘eco’ or ‘bio’ stuff isn’t much better, so we advise Shambalans swerve it altogether.
+ Face wipes – 11 billion wet wipes are used annually – even ‘biodegradable’ are bad news. We recommend using reusable pads with oils, to remove make-up ecologically. It works. And your skin feels great.
+ Disposable vapes – 2 disposable vapes are thrown away a second. They are utterly impossible to recycle. Please bring only reusables this year. Disposables are banned at Shamabla, and illegal in the UK from next year!
+ Disposable costumes – Please do craft your costumes from second hand or recyclable materials. We are literally blown away by all the creativity of your wild lunatics every year. We love it!
+ Plastic packaging – Please try to avoid bringing too many snack attacks in plastic. We find lots of un-eaten crisps, bread and squished bananas. We have a plastic-free snack truck, and organic produce.
+ Smokers – Avoid plastic tips and switch to biodegradable for your roll ups. You can purchase these from our tobacco kiosks on site.
Menstruators – heaps of menstrual products are riddled with plastic, which are environmentally damaging – and reusable alternatives are much kinder on your body too. Check out this amazing guide to learn about eco-friendly alternatives for or visit the Red Sea Travel Agency on site for more information.
Our Achievements
IN 2022 WE SENT 10 TONNES OF DELICIOUS COMPOST TO A LOCAL FARM
We were sending much of our food waste to a regenerative community farm 13 miles down the road. The farm hosted a ‘’Compostival’’ to process the compost and used it to grow salads and vegetables for Shambala 2023. Yum! That’s a tasty, closed loop cycle. This year, they have closed and relocated unfortunately, so we are processing all food waste with a big, commercial agricultural compost factory. Please be sure to grab a compost caddy from your local Campsite Hub, Site office or Toilet Block to separate and collect your food waste into composting – where it belongs best!
IN 2018 WE CAPTURED (& PROPERLY RECYCLED) 12,000 DISPOSABLE HOT-DRINK CUPS
2018 marked the second year of our ‘Bring A Cup’ scheme – where we encourage our audience to bring their own, reusable cup for any hot drinks they wish to buy on site. Those that use a disposable coffee cup were charged a levy on each cup, and we had dedicated bins to capture the disposable cups and get them properly recycled*. Cups that went in the wrong bin are not able to be recycled properly – so we were very pleased to capture 12,000 cups from the dedicated bins in 2018 – an increase of over 50% on the previous year.
(* most recycling plants are not able to recycle cardboard coffee cups, due to a sneaky polymer lining).
2023 and onwards
Nowadays, we’ve done away with disposables altogether, and Shamablans bring their own mugs – or buy a reusable one for the future from Traders. This is exciting behaviour change, to help us all edge ourselves away from convenience culture into mindful material use. Please remember to bring your own water bottle and hot-drink mug for the party!