What are the opening hours?

Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm

Rubbish Ideas, Bristol (2026)

29/05/2026

250g CO2e. One rum and cola.

That is one of the lowest-carbon drinks you can serve at an event. And most people ordering one have no idea.

That is the point. Carbon-conscious menus do not have to mean joyless menus.

They do not have to mean removing the crowd favourites, overhauling every supplier relationship, or handing attendees a lecture alongside their drink.

They mean knowing what is in your menu, ingredient by ingredient, and making informed decisions about what you serve and how you source it.

A rum and cola comes in at 250g CO2e per serving.
A beef-based dish at the same bar can carry more than double that in a single portion.

The difference is not always visible on the menu.
It is almost never tracked on the balance sheet.

That gap between what events serve and what events measure is where the carbon footprint of the hospitality industry quietly accumulates.

The catering and events industry accounts for approximately 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Not because individual choices are catastrophic. Because millions of untracked choices compound across thousands of events every season.

The Rubbish Portal breaks that down ingredient by ingredient.

Carbon scoring across your full menu, every vendor, every service day.

So the drinks and dishes that are already performing well get recognised, the high-impact items get flagged before the season starts, and the data exists to show stakeholders, sponsors, and attendees exactly what progress looks like year on year.

The rum and cola is already doing its part.
The question is whether the rest of your menu is.

What does the carbon breakdown of your event's food and drink offering actually look like?

25/05/2026

100 million single-use plastic cups are used at UK festivals and live events every year.

Most of them are incinerated or sent to landfill before the weekend is over.

Look at that crowd.
Now count the cups.
Every single one of those drinks was served in something.

And in most events across the UK, that something was designed to be used once, discarded, and forgotten.
The people holding them had no idea.

They came for the atmosphere, the food, the music.
The cup was never part of the decision.

That is exactly why the system has to make the right choice the easiest one.
Reusable cups work.

Glastonbury proved it when their deposit return scheme hit a 92% return rate.

Attendees returned cups not because they were environmentally motivated in that moment, but because the system was clear, the incentive was obvious, and the return point was right in front of them.

A reusable cup needs to be used at least seven times to outperform a single-use alternative on carbon impact.

A well-run scheme gets there easily.
A poorly tracked one never does.
The difference between the two is data.

The Rubbish Portal tracks cup return rates alongside every other waste stream at your event. So you know whether your reusable cup scheme is actually delivering the environmental benefit it was designed for, or whether it is quietly underperforming behind a good-looking initiative.

The cup in this photo could come back.
It just needs a system worth returning to.

What does your current cup return rate look like?

22/05/2026

Your festival tent kept you dry all weekend, but leaving it behind means it will sit in a landfill for centuries.

Cheap, single-use festival tents are one of the biggest challenges in event sustainability.

They are often marketed as temporary convenience items, but their environmental impact is permanent.

At Rubbish Ideas, we create actual solutions to phase out this culture of waste.
We believe that design should never assume an item is disposable.

By working with organizers and rethinking material lifecycles, we help events move toward a truly circular ecosystem.

If an item is only built to last a few days, it shouldn't be manufactured in the first place.

What specific incentives or rules do you think festival organizers should implement to ensure attendees actually pack up and take their gear home?

Let’s share ideas and build better solutions in the comments below.

22/05/2026

Tents left behind aren't just waste.
They're a recycling failure hiding in plain sight.

Look at that field from above. What looks like a sea of colour on Sunday night is a landfill problem by Monday morning.

Over 250,000 tents are abandoned at UK festivals every year.

Most festival-goers leaving them behind genuinely believe they will be donated, collected, passed on to someone who needs them.

The reality is that up to 90% are flattened by site security during checks before waste contractors even arrive.

What was salvageable becomes irreparable in hours.

The aerial view makes it impossible to look away.

Every tent in that field is polyester, nylon, aluminium, and composite fabric. Materials that cannot be processed together. Materials that require separation to have any recovery value at all. Materials that almost never get that chance.

This is not a problem caused by irresponsible festival-goers. The people who left those tents behind had no system to return them to. No collection point with a clear purpose. No infrastructure that made doing the right thing easier than walking away.

That is the gap the industry has to close.

And it starts with knowing exactly what is coming off your site, in what volume, and where the recovery window closes.

The Rubbish Portal gives event organisers the data to build that system before the weekend starts, not after the damage is done.

Waste stream tracking, recovery rate benchmarking, and year-on-year reporting built specifically for events.

Because the field in this photo does not have to look like this.

The failure is visible from the sky.
The fix starts on the ground.
Is your event tracking what gets left behind?

08/05/2026

Every tent in this photo has a second life it will never get.

Not because the material is unrecoverable. B

ecause nobody built a system to collect it separately before the weekend started.

Tents are made from polyester, nylon, aluminium, and composite fabrics. Mixed materials that cannot be processed together. Throw them in general waste, which is what happens to the overwhelming majority, and any recovery value is gone within 48 hours of the last act leaving the stage.

Separating tents as a dedicated textile waste stream is one of the most straightforward interventions available to event organisers. It is also one of the least implemented in the industry.

Over 250,000 tents are abandoned at UK festivals every year. Most festival-goers leaving them believe they will be donated. Up to 90% end up in landfill or incineration.

The gap between those two facts is not an awareness problem. It is an infrastructure and data problem.

Organisers cannot build the right waste streams without knowing what is coming off their site, in what volume, and where the recovery rate is collapsing in real time.

That is exactly what the Rubbish Portal tracks.

Waste stream data, carbon reporting, and year-on-year benchmarking built for events. So the decision to separate tents is not a guess made the week before.

It is a number-backed call made long before the gates open.

The tent does not have to end up in landfill.

It just needs a different destination and a system that makes that destination real.

Is separate textile collection part of your waste plan this season?

01/05/2026

650 grams of CO2e.
One bowl of mashed potato and gravy.

That's before a single cup has been poured, a stage has been powered, or a tent has been pitched.

Now multiply that by every meal served across every food trader at your event.

Across every day.
Across every vendor who has never once measured the carbon sitting inside their menu.

The catering and events industry is responsible for approximately 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

That number sits quietly inside every food order placed, every beef-based gravy ladled, every dairy-heavy comfort dish served from a paper bowl to someone who came for the music and left without knowing the real cost of lunch.

The math is not complicated once you start looking at it.

Beef produces 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases per kilogram.
Peas produce just one.
Eighty grams of beef-based gravy in a single serving carries more carbon than the entire potato beneath it.

That is not an argument against comfort food. It is an argument for knowing what you are serving before you serve 5,000 portions of it.

Denmark's Roskilde Festival labelled all 400 food options across 100 vendors with carbon scores, giving buyers the information to make lower-impact choices and giving the festival the data to measure its entire food operation.

That was 2018.
Most UK events still cannot tell you the carbon footprint of a single dish on their menus today.

The Rubbish Portal changes that.

Carbon tracking built specifically for events means every meal served becomes a data point, every menu decision becomes a measurable intervention, and every year of trading builds a benchmark you can actually improve against.

Not estimates pulled from national averages.
Numbers from your caterers, your site, your event.

A bowl of mashed potato and gravy is a mid-high carbon meal.
It does not have to stay that way indefinitely.
But you cannot reduce what you have never measured.

What does the carbon footprint of your event's food offering actually look like?

hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag

29/04/2026

"How bad can I be? I'm just doing what comes naturally."

That's the song playing over 250,000 abandoned tents.

Every UK festival season, the same fields return to the same state.

Poles snapped.
Flysheets shredded.
Sleeping bags soaked through and left behind by people who genuinely believed someone else would sort it.

For a long time, the industry let that belief stand unchallenged.

"How bad can I be? I'm just following my economic plan."

A cheap tent bought for £25, used for 72 hours, then left in the mud.

Made from polyester, nylon, carbon fibre, and aluminium. Materials that don't biodegrade and are nearly impossible to separate and recycle. Tents alone account for 17% of all festival waste that ends up in landfill.

Then the video changes.

Because it always could have looked different.

Responsible festival-goers exist and they always have.
People who fold the tent, carry the weight, and leave the field the way they found it.
The infrastructure just never matched their effort.

"How bad can I be? It's a high-quality product I'm selling."

Here's the question that matters.

Not for the festival-goer.
For the organiser.

How long can you run an event without knowing exactly what's leaving your site?

Without knowing which waste streams are recoverable, what's being contaminated before it reaches the skip, or what your actual diversion rate looks like year on year?

UK festivals generate 23,500 tonnes of waste every year.

Only 20% of it is actually recycled.

Not because the will isn't there.
Because the systems were never built to capture it.

The Rubbish Portal was built for the organisers who have seen both halves of this story and want to live in the second one.

Waste stream tracking, carbon reporting, and year-on-year benchmarking designed specifically for events.

The difference between estimating and actually knowing.
Between a field that happened to you and a result you engineered.

The Lorax was ignored until it was too late.
You still have a season ahead of you.

28/04/2026

What if the hardest part of event circularity wasn’t the recycling - but the traceability?

We are pleased to announce that Without Waste NZ (WOW) has come onboard as a partner of Rubbish Ideas.

They are a leading force in sustainable event operations: helping organizers transition from linear waste streams to functional resource loops.

And they are focused on one critical truth:
You cannot manage what you cannot measure.

Here is what stands out for us:
📊 Data-backed transparency. Using The Rubbish Portal to turn messy operational data into a clear map for material flows and return rates.

✅ Regulatory readiness. Helping partners navigate the end of the PPWR grace period with verified "waste and carbon accountancy".

🛠️ Visual impact tools. Providing a "fantastic visual tool" to technically justify sustainability decisions.

🔄 Closing the loop. Moving beyond simple "green claims" to track real-world performance for products like reusable pint cups.

💰 Collaborative value. Organizations working with Without Waste now get a stackable 5 percent discount when they upgrade their Rubbish Portal account.

We are excited to work together on closing the gap between ambition and action: and making circularity simpler, smarter, and fully measurable.

If you work in events, sustainability, or operations: what is the single biggest "data blind spot" in your current material stream - and what would having a live visual dashboard change for your team today?

25/04/2026

The tent in this photo isn't just waste.

It's a textile.

A recyclable one - if anyone separates it in time.

Most don't.

Tents are made from different types of plastic, composite fabric, and metal; materials that are nearly impossible to process together. Bizarreculture

Throw them in general waste, which is what happens to the vast majority, and any recovery value disappears immediately.

The materials that could be reclaimed become contaminated, compressed, and irretrievable within 48 hours of the gates closing.

The fix isn't complicated in theory. Separating the materials makes the recycling process simpler, but it's time and labour intensive.

Which is exactly why it almost never happens without a deliberate system built around it before the event starts, not scrambled together after.

77% of camping tents used at festivals are abandoned; generating over 900 tonnes of waste that can't be recycled or repurposed.

Tents alone make up 17% of all festival waste that ends up in landfill.

Not because the material is unrecoverable.

Because it was never collected as a separate stream in the first place.

That's a design failure, not a behaviour failure.

Separate textile waste collection is one of the highest-leverage changes an event organiser can make and one of the least implemented.

But you can only act on it if you know what's leaving your site and how.

That requires data, not assumptions.

The Rubbish Portal gives events the waste stream visibility to make that call; tracking what's being separated, what's being contaminated, and where your recovery rate is being lost before it reaches the skip.

The information to build the right infrastructure starts with knowing what's actually happening on the ground.

The tent doesn't have to end up in landfill.

It just needs a different destination and a system that makes that destination possible.

Is separate textile collection part of your current waste plan?

Rubbish Ideas

29/05/2026

25/05/2026

22/05/2026

22/05/2026

08/05/2026

01/05/2026

29/04/2026

28/04/2026

25/04/2026

Address

Opening Hours

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm