The Daily Swarm

Spiegel:

Soon you can add a night out clubbing to your bag of green tricks. A new technology developed by the environmental innovation lab Enviu takes advantage of the vast amount of energy expended by revellers as they throw themselves around the dance floor. And its debut is right around the corner. On September 2, Iggy Pop will be performing at Club Watt in Rotterdam, Holland. And those on the dance floor will play their part in keeping the lights lit and the bass thumping.

“When you dance, you generate energy by the shaking of the ground,” Stef van Dongen, director of environmental innovation lab Enviu, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “What we do, very simply, is to capture the movement of dancing people and transform it into energy.”

The club will be among the first in the world to give back some of what dancers leave on the floor—and it is part of a larger effort by Enviu subsidiary Sustainable Dance Club (SDC) to introduce environmental technology to an industry that has traditionally been a voracious consumer of electricity. Your average nightclub swallows up 150 times the amount of power normal households do. Club Watt plans to use 30 percent less.

Sustainable Dance Club:

It is SDC’s ambition to reduce energy consumption by 30% and water consumption and waste production by 50%. Together with SDC, Club WATT has turned these ambitions into a reality with a sustainable design and business plan. The savings on water consumption, for example, are achieved with a rainwater flush system for toilets, waterless urinals, water-saving taps and central glass cleaning spots behind all the bars. Energy will be saved with the use of renewable energy sources and LED lighting.

Along with the construction and installation of several spectacular SDC elements, the business of the club will be conducted in a responsible way, integrating sustainability into all processes. Some examples of this include the use of ethical company clothing, decreased paper usage and the setting up of education and work programmes in the local area.

Club WATT opens its doors to the public on the 4th of September.