Image credit: Shambala
Despite tens of thousands of tents being left in the fields at Leeds, Reading and Creamfields over the weekend, the 15,000 attendees of Shambala managed to leave the campsites completely free of abandoned tents when they went home on Monday morning.
Shambala organisers said today: “We’re bursting with pride to announce that ZERO tents were left behind at Shambala 2022.
“We had a few broken tents which were packed up neatly by the bin points, which is amazing.
“We’ve had one report that somebody did leave a tent, so campers took matters into their own hands, packed it up for them properly and left it at a recycling point, a huge extra thank you to those people. We’re blown away – it CAN be done. Thank you, you heroes.”
Image credit: Shambala
While 99% of tents were taken home from Shambala in recent years, this is the first time the festival’s campsites have been left without a single tent. It’s a landmark achievement for the eco-friendly festival and comes after last summer’s spin-off event Shambino, which was a third of the size at only 5,000 capacity, also saw 100% of tents taken home.
Shambala attendees have come close before, and the last time a full-size Shambala Festival was held in 2019, just six tents were left in the fields. This was after 180 tents were left behind in 2018 and just 33 were abandoned in 2017.
Such figures are rare within the festival industry, especially at events with tens of thousands of people camping. While the 130,000+ Glastonbury attendees managed to take 99.3% of their tents home in 2019, it’s estimated that 250,000 tents are abandoned in festival campsites across the UK each summer.
Images from Reading, Leeds and Creamfields this weekend have shocked the wider public after being featured in the national press. Aerial footage from Reading Festival, shown below, shows thousands of tents surrounded by piles of litter and debris.
Drone images from Creamfields tell a similar tale, with Warrington Guardian reporting: “Thousands of tents have been left behind and a large amount of litter is scattered across the fields in Daresbury. There are also large numbers of airbeds that have been left at the site.”
Shambala is known for its eco-credentials and efforts to minimise the festival’s impact on the planet. All food sold at the festival has been vegetarian since 2016 when all meat and fish was removed from the menu. A ban on selling hot drinks made with dairy milk at the event was brought in for 2019, with organisers saying: “The evidence is overwhelming that reducing your meat and fish intake is one of the very best things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint and ecological damage.
“The cow plays a real starring role when it comes to agricultural emissions, so swapping cows’ milk for plant-based alternatives is a simple and small step we can take to reduce our impact.”
Almond and rice milk were also ruled out of the festival owing to their associated environmental impacts. This year’s attendees were encouraged to bring reusable mugs for being served hot drinks, along with reusable water bottles to cut down on plastic use.
Shambala now completely sells out of tickets before the line-up is released, with most tickets selling out in January this year before the final cycle package tickets sold out in March. Those tickets included a guided bike ride from Bristol, Brighton, London or Sheffield and camping along the way.
In 2020, all non-cycling tickets for Shambala sold out in January before the event was forced to cancel. And ahead of Shambala 2019, all general admission tickets also sold out in January leaving only coach and cycling packages available – where you must arrive via the booked coach or guided cycle ride for your entry ticket to be valid.
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