Several of the festival inventions developed over the years via DTU’s collaboration with Roskilde Festival are still very much alive and kicking. This year’s festival will see a massive presence of DropBucket, Volt, and PeeFence.
It is the seventh time that DTU is dispatching engineering students to Roskilde to develop solutions for the festival—and while a new group of students are testing devices for eco-friendly refrigeration, hygiene measurement, and urine dust elimination, there are some evergreens from previous years, which are still so popular among festival-goers that they that can be found all over the festival again this year.
Both the mobile PeeFence urinal, the sustainable disposable waste bin DropBucket, and the mobile battery Volt have been designed by DTU students and tested at the festival. Today, all three products have become commercial successes, and the companies behind are continuously making life easier for festival-goers all over Europe. This year, the products are more visible than ever before at Roskilde Festival.
Urinal for fences
It is unavoidable that the long stretches of fencing at the festival are being converted into urinals as male festival-goers fence their way through the crowds to relieve themselves. Three years ago, the team behind PeeFence tested a single prototype in the festival’s backstage area—a 1.5 mm thin plastic mat folded into a spiral at the bottom and connected to a drain.
The following year, the festival invested in 12 PeeFences, then 200, and, this year, Roskilde Festival has invested in 400 PeeFences, which cover fences throughout the camping area.
Tuborg partnering with DropBucket
Another festival favourite developed by DTU students is DropBucket—the sustainable cardboard waste bin which can be put up where required and discarded together with its content. The waste bin was tested at the 2013 festival, and, in addition to having won the prestigious Red Dot Award for Best Design in 2015, it can also be found on a massive scale at this year’s festival.
The two women behind the invention have entered into an official partnership with Tuborg, which will distribute 4,000 DropBuckets during the festival as part of an information campaign on waste management and responsibility.
Mobile battery
Volt is the solution to the festival-goers’ problem of running low on battery while snapchatting, instagramming, and sending text messages. Yet another innovation from DTU students, which back in 2012 was tested on only 500 customers.
In 2015, 30,000 visitors bought the small smart Volt battery which you collect fully charged and replace with a new when depleted. This year, Volt estimates this figure to be around 40,000. There will be 16 permanent charging stations on the entire camping area, where owners of a Volt battery can get a recharge without handing in their phones, and ten mobile stations that will be visiting the camps to exchange Volt batteries.