Christopher BarrettShambala Festival has launched an online environmental impact reporting platform and a Green Roadmap for 2025.
The new reporting platform presents a comprehensive overview of how the 2022 edition of the 15,000-capacity festival impacted the environment. Shambala co-founder and sustainability lead Chris Johnson said the report, which was designed with animated graphics and video with the aim of engaging more people than a PDF report, is “just the beginning”.
Shambala’s The Green Roadmap 2025 sets out the event organisers’ goals, strategy and milestones for its journey toward becoming a fully regenerative festival. Johnson said the focus of the initiative extends far beyond the festival weekend and the festival site to positively impact and improve its “entire, diverse and far-reaching” supply chain.
Johnson, who is chair of Vision: 2025, a co-founding member of the Association of Independent Festivals and co-founder and CEO of sustainable travel charity ecolibrium, said, “We are already meat and fish free, we’ve designed out disposable plastics, and we are powered by renewable electricity. But it’s time to go further, and dream the future we want to see, and that goes beyond practice actions we take, and into the realm of a philosophy which underpins our actions – regenerative is holistic, inclusive and can help frame the changes we seek to make.
“For food, it means the producers we choose to work with will actively enhance biodiversity and soil quality, rather than depleting it. For materials and services, it means the companies we choose to work with will be committed to actively improving the environment, and be ethical employers.
“It means a commitment from us, to actively improve the land we party on, and to contribute positively and significantly to the local community that host and welcome us. It means not waiting until 2050, or even 2030, to be carbon positive, when we all know that’s far too late.”