Shambala’s “Bring a Bottle” Campaign raises over £3000 for FRANK Water charity

Shambala’s pioneering campaign, urging festival-goers to “Bring a Bottle” has raised more than £3000 for partner charity, FRANK Water, helping to provide safe, clean drinking water to thousands of the poorest people in the world. Organisers of this year’s Festival banned all disposable plastics from the site, including bottled water and single use plastic pint glasses. Instead, Shambala asked all festival-goers, staff and artists to bring their own refillable bottle and invited FRANK Water to deliver their FreeFill drinking water initiative, providing free, chilled, filtered water. For those who forgot to Bring a Bottle, co-branded, coloured bottles were available for sale with profits going to FRANK Water – and an amazing 1 in 10 of the audience purchased a bottle.The campaign was part of Shambala’s drive to eliminate disposable plastics from the festival in a bid to reduce plastic waste and its impact on the environment. And it worked! Ninety two percent of 92% respondents in their audience survey thought the site was cleaner and 93%  “understood the reasons for the campaign and thought it was a good idea”.As a result of the campaign, Shambala saved 10,000 plastic water bottles and 75,000 pints cups from being used once - and  then thrown away or recycled.Festival veterans, FRANK Water, have provided chilled, filtered water to thirsty festival-goers since 2010. The initiative was originally designed to reduce plastic waste and recycling, encourage behaviour change and raise funds for clean water projects in developing countries. To date, FRANK Water has funded 104 clean water projects in rural India,  providing safe, clean drinking water for more than 180,000 people. Kambe Events (the company behind Shambala) is now working with the RAW Foundation and other experts to produce a free campaign resource for the industry with tips to eliminate disposable plastics, building on the successes of both the Bring a Bottle campaign and the RAW Foundation’s Making Waves exhibitions, which explore the impacts of plastic pollution in the oceans.Chris Johnson, Festival Director told us “This has been one of our most successful green initiatives to date – we reduced environmental impacts, reduced costs, and improved the audience”.For more info, visit www.frankwater.com