ESB has teamed up with popular boutique festival Electric Picnic to raise awareness around sustainability in an unusual manner: Picnic-ers are encouraged to get pedalling on a bicycle carousel with the goal of powering an electric shower.
Power your own shower
This carousel of 30 bikes hooked up to an electric shower is known as the Picnic Power Shower and festival revellers can watch it in action at the ‘Showeraoke’ event where the bike-powered shower gets tested by whoever wishes to show off their singing skills as they get lathered up. (Oh yeah, don’t forget your swimsuit – the folks at Electric Picnic are probably not that keen on participants in the nip!)
An exercise in sustainability
Seems completely kooky? Well, that’s what Electric Picnic is all about. Besides, if participants can see how much pedal power it takes to power a hot shower then they might think twice before running taps, having extra long baths and showers when they get a feel for how much power is wasted in the process. This is experiencing your carbon footprint while your feet do all the work.
As an aside the Picnic Power Shower also works as a mobile charger and the money they donate for the privilege goes to Temple Street Children’s Hospital.
“We’re really excited about ESB Picnic Power at this year’s festival – from the carousel to the ‘Showeraoke’ it’s going to be very different to anything we’ve done before,” said Lisa Browne, sponsorship manager, ESB.
“We’ve joined forces with Electric Picnic to drive sustainability at the festival and we’ve already succeeded in reducing the festival’s lighting emissions by 80pc.”
Reducing your carbon footprint
“We wanted to use the Picnic Power Shows to demonstrate that it takes 30 people cycling to power just one shower – we want people to start thinking about sustainability at home, at work and especially at the festival and to have fun reducing their carbon footprint,” she added.
Another green angle to look out for while at Electric Picnic is ESB’s energy efficient festoon lighting: there’s 6km of the stuff and it has reduced the festival’s lighting emissions by 30pc.
