02/09/2026
Behind the scenes at Shambala…. Working with the Sustainability Crew…
This is the bit I came for.
Shambala has been quietly pioneering festival sustainability for years, and getting to work behind the scenes with the team was a genuine privilege.
A few things that made me want to cheer:
No meat or fish sold on site. No cow’s milk, all the milk is oat, from a local supplier. Chocolate, coffee, sugar, bananas all Fair Trade or better, and some of the coffee traders buy direct from growers, which after volunteering on a coffee farm in Colombia means a lot to me.
Every bit of serveware home compostable, mostly bagasse, because there’s food composting all over site: caddies by your tent, bins everywhere, the lot turned into compost through hot composting, with compost loos too. It’s one of the only festivals composting food waste at this scale, which is exactly why the “no crappy bioplastic” standard matters.
No single-use cups. A £1.50 reusable cup deposit that funds the whole washing-and-reuse system, and on the last day we stood at the exit collecting cups back, with a free-ticket prize draw to keep as many in the loop as possible.
No Coca-Cola, no Pepsi, no monopoly brands, independent traders only. Leftover food redistributed to a local community fridge, food banks and community projects. Recycling sorted by hand so it actually gets recycled. A recycling bond to bring your rubbish back. And a campsite left almost spotless, because people took their stuff home.
More festivals should be doing it like this. All of it is possible. Shambala proves it every year.
