Co-founder & CEO of Rubbish Ideas
Head of Sustainability at Kambe Events (Shambala Organisers)
In recent years, countries and companies across the globe have set ambitious environmental targets—pledging to reduce carbon emissions, waste, and other ecological impacts by 2030, 2040, and beyond. The events industry is no exception.
However, a major challenge is emerging: the better companies get at measuring their impact, the worse their results can appear—on paper, at least. This paradox threatens to undermine efforts to achieve genuine sustainability improvements, especially for those businesses that are serious about change.
For many events, impact measurement is a relatively new practice. Data gathering and analysis methods are complex and constantly evolving. As organisers invest in improving their energy, waste, transport measurement systems – their reported impact often appears to grow, and seems worse.
However this doesn’t mean that their actual environmental impact has increased—it just means they’re getting closer to understanding the full picture, the full impact that was always there. For organisations with strong sustainability commitments, this can be a frustrating experience. They may, in fact, be improving their practices year on year, yet their reported results suggest otherwise – due to the enhanced accuracy of their data.
This is exactly what we’ve seen with Shambala Festival, a pioneer in sustainable events.
Shambala Festival has led the events industry by putting sustainability at the core of its operations. They are fiercely committed to reducing their environmental impact—and equally committed to accurately measuring it. This dual focus on both impact reduction and measurement improvement highlights the paradox we’re discussing.
Take their data collection efforts, for example:
They’ve expanded their monitoring to include detailed consortiums, think tanks, and methodologies such as the Green Deal Circular Festivals (GDCF) framework. This expanded their scope of measurement and revealed a dramatic increase in reported carbon emissions—from 317 tonnes of CO2e in 2019 to 970 tonnes CO2e in 2023.
At first glance, this jump seems alarming. However, it’s crucial to understand that this isn’t due to a surge in emissions. Instead, it reflects Shambala’s enhanced ability to measure accurately and honestly. The great jump incorporated a multitude of new measurements including:
Their reported results may now look worse (i.e. higher impact) than other festivals – but that’s because they’ve included many more impacts. On a per-person, per-day basis, Shambala is actually one of the lowest-impact events in the UK. – nearly ¼ of the average UK citizen’s impact per-day.
Unfortunately, this dynamic creates a negative incentive structure across industries. Companies that are less committed to sustainability—those using environmental claims mainly as a marketing tool—face little motivation to improve their measurement. In fact, they may benefit from keeping their data vague or inconsistent. After all, the less they measure, the lower their reported impact will appear.
This is the opposite intention to what we need to embrace at this point in history. We need openness, honesty, ambition and integrity. Yet, if organisations arrive at punishing metrics which challenge their reputation and market standing, simply for improving their measurement systems, it discourages the market from following suit.
We at Rubbish Ideas have been thinking a lot about this challenge as we develop our waste and carbon accounting platform, The Rubbish Portal. Our goal is to make it easier for businesses to measure and report their impact, with a focus on being as accurate as possible. We aim to bring events together to share this honest representation of impact.
We are well aware that capturing all the data needed to fully calculate impact is extremely difficult and requires time. Measurement is an iterative process, so we’ve designed the Rubbish Portal to support businesses as they improve their data over time. One key feature is our use of smart calculations to estimate the impact of unmeasured factors.
For example, we can predict and incorporate missing inputs, to estimate the embodied emissions of products typically used at events. The platform does this by analysing a sample of the data uploaded to our system and combining it with our knowledge of the waste materials collected. From there, it can generate an overall carbon figure, including a breakdown of estimated versus measured values.
As more events use the Rubbish Portal, our platform becomes smarter. Over time, we’ll be able to analyse and compare data across events, improving our prediction algorithms. This “hive mind” approach will help events make better decisions and forecast the impact of operational changes. For example, if an event is considering switching to reusable cups, we’ll be able to estimate how much it might reduce their waste based on data from other similar events that have already made this change. The more data events share, the more powerful these insights become
It’s also important to recognise that carbon coefficients—such as those supplied by DEFRA—are regularly updated. These conversion factors evolve as industries decarbonise and as our understanding of embodied carbon improves. For instance, as steelmakers shift away from coal, the carbon impact of steel is reduced, and these changes are reflected in the updated coefficients. This means that even the most diligent businesses need to regularly reassess their data and methodologies to ensure that they’re using up-to-date figures.
We believe that accurate, comprehensive measurement must become a top priority for the events industry and beyond. Businesses need to recognise that improving their data practices might make their results look worse in the short term, but it’s a necessary step towards genuine impact reduction
Organisations like Shambala are demonstrating what true leadership looks like. They’re not just focused on meeting sustainability targets; they’re committed to understanding and improving their impact with transparency and integrity. We need more businesses to adopt this mindset—prioritising better data over better headlines.
Achieving real progress in sustainability requires us all to confront uncomfortable truths in the data. It may not always make us look good today, but it’s the only way to secure a better future for tomorrow.
Be like Shambala and sign-up to The Rubbish Portal today using this promo-code for a 10% discount: