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Clubbing and Working Out to Save the World

By Flickr user danielle_blue
While out dancing, you obviously expend a lot of energy. Have you ever wondered why you can't channel that all that energy toward solving our planet's energy crisis? Or maybe you've realized, while riding a stationary bike at the gym, that you're acting much like a windmill or generator; but where is all that energy going?

Thanks to All Day Buffet's blog, we just found out about a new nightclub opening in King's Cross, London, that has turned some of these questions into a green business plan and nightlife destination. The club, called Club4Climate, will feature a dance floor that absorbs energy from dancing, and converts it into electricity. It opens tonight, July 10! Club4Climate isn't the first club to think of using this technology; the idea for the first Sustainable Dance Club was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 2006, and is scheduled to open for business this September.

A similar idea has taken root in the fitness gym industry. A Hong Kong gym, California Fitness, established a program called "Powered by YOU" in which three types of exercise machines help to generate electricity, rather than just using it up. The president of California Fitness says, "One person has the ability of producing 50 watts of electricity per hour when exercising at a moderate pace….If a person spends one hour per day running on the machine, he/she could generate 18.2 kilowatts of electricity and prevent 4,380 liters of CO2 released per year." And in Seattle, Washington, a personal training studio has opened as a "green microgym" where spinning bikes are connected to wind-generator motors to power the gym's music system.

Well before these new technologies were developed, though, the concept of eco-friendly exercise programs already seemed quite natural: take the Green Gym program, which was started by the UK environmental organization BTCV. Participants improve their health and the environment's by spending time outdoors to work on gardening or environmental projects. This year, Green Gym is celebrating its tenth anniversary of starting its first local program; now there are 95 Green Gyms across the UK.