Thinking outside the square

I was flicking back through an old issue of Good magazine the other day and read a couple of their 'News' items from around the world. What struck me was firstly there was a little bit of the Matrix about them and secondly they were incredibly innovative.

The first article was about a new nightclub in London called Surya. You get in free if you can prove that you travelled there by foot, bicycle or public transport. Nothing too innovative in that. The club also has its own wind turbine, solar energy system, waterless urinals and serves organic spirits. All good but still not that new. The thing that is very innovative is the dancefloor. It uses piezoelecticity where the dancers' groovy moves compress crystals underneath that generate electricity. Isn't that amazing?

The second example is from Stockholm in Sweden. There they have put heat exchangers in the ventilation system of their Central Station to capture the heat generated from the 250,000 or so people passing through every day. I guess it works a bit like a heat pump taking the warm air from outside and pumping it in to your home. Evidently human bodies generate between 60 and 100 watts of energy a day in the form of heat (see what I mean about the Matrix). The energy being captured by these Swedes is being used to heat the hot water in a new 40,000m² building complex in the city.

These examples provide great food for thought. My key take out is that the concept of sustainability doesn't have to mean 'going without'. Instead, if we were to start dreaming up and implementing out-of-the-box initiatives like these we can have our cake and eat it too.