How to Keep Roskilde Festival Goers Sustainably Fresh?

2018’s hot weather meant that the there was a great need for showers at Denmark’s largest music festival Roskilde. This time they could choose to shower in recycled bathwater by testing the new sustainable shower solution from EIT Climate-KIC supported start-up Flow Loop.

Water is in many parts of the world a scarce resource. In Denmark, it is usually found in abundance from frequent rain showers and rainy days that often seem to aggregate around the annual Roskilde Festival. This year, the festival goers have been blessed with sunny weather – and so has the sustainable start-up Flow Loop, who chose to stress test their circulating shower solution at the festival.

Flow Loop has developed a filtering process with six steps to recycle bathwater saving both water and energy without compromising on comfort or water pressure. The system saves up to 85 per cent water and 75 per cent energy compared to a normal shower. For the past six months, the solution has been tested at DTU Water in Lyngby, North of Copenhagen. Last week it passed its first real stress test on people dirtier than you’ll usually see in the average household – sweaty festival goers at Roskilde Festival.

“Roskilde Festival is the perfect location for us to stress-test our system, because if the filtration and UV-purification of our shower panels can handle a week with hundreds of really dirty festival guests, then it can handle the worst case scenario in any standard bathroom,”

says CEO and Founder, Simon Kolff.

Promising test results

At Roskilde Festival, the water wasn’t led out through the showerheads again. Instead, the water got aggregated in a mini-lab where DTU Water performed tests on the bathwater. So far, the bathwater was deemed safe for showering in, however, the Festival did not want to take responsibility for the water to be used for drinking water just yet.

“Tests at DTU have documented that our system provides good bathing water quality, but not drinking water quality. Since the festival is a public event, our test setup works slightly different than our system is intended to work. As we do not circulate the water back to the showerhead, we can test the water quality via a hose to DTU’s mini-lab in the shower wagons,”

says Simon Kolff.

The EIT Climate-KIC Greentech Accelerator

Flow Loop has received DKK 450.000 from Innovationsfonden and has been accepted into the EIT Climate-KIC start-up accelerator.

“Flow Loop has been through stage one and two of Climate-KIC and we have received EUR 45.000 from the accelerator programme. Once the first successful pilot projects are in place, we hope to be accepted to stage three as we prepare to enter the market and apply for certifications,”

says Simon Kolff.

The EIT Climate-KIC Start-up Accelerator Programme has supported more than 1.000 start-ups and helped them raise more than 550 million euro in funding.

The accelerator has three stages and the possibility to get up to 95.000 euro in equity-free funding.

The programme annually accepts 20 start-ups from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland and runs intakes twice a year.