If you go to the Netherlands–where I was last week, visiting Philips–remember to go to WATT in between visits to all those Coffee Shops, a club in which you can get drunk, dance, and maybe snog someone while actually helping to save the planet. The whole disco has been designed to save energy and carbon emissions, starting with its power-generating dance floor.
As the clubbers in Britain’s first-ever eco-nightclub rave their little hearts out in the coming months, they’ll be doing their part to conserve energy. Well, their feet will be, because the energy that powers 60% of the club is going to be generated by the springy dance floor beneath them. The springs in the floor are connected to power generating blocks made of piezoelectric crystals. It’s similar to what Enviu, a Netherlands-based research group, proposed for Holland-based clubs, but with a different accent. Like that system, the British club’s crystals produce current when subjected to pressure created by the gyrating bodies above. But millionaire founder Andrew Charalambous didn’t stop with spring-filled floors–he’s taking the entire green thing very seriously.
