The Green Microgym Harnesses Your Workout Power

Posted on January 1, 2009 by Doug Gunzelmann in Health+Beauty

The Green Microgym in Portland Oregon captures the energy produced from gym goers working off those holiday calories. The Human Dynamo spin bikes can generate 350 watts of continuous and useful energy. Perfect place to start the New Years resolution workout regime.

Some of the ways founder Adam Boesel has made the Green Microgym more eco friendly include:

SportsArt EcoPowr Treadmills use 30% less electricity than others
Solar panels generate an average of 8 Kilowatt Hours per day
Recycled rubber, marmoleum, and eco-friendly cork flooring
Conserve space to reduce energy requirements for the facility
Personalize lighting and cooling for individual needs

They also use a retrofitted spin bike to produce energy from a generator hooked to the piece of equipment. The power is then stored in batteries for later use.

This concept is brilliant, attainable, and quickly effective. When taken into consideration, the wasteful societal behavior of over consumption and subsequent gym bouts is staggering. Consuming more food than necessary (which wastes water and energy to produce) to then work out in a gym, that runs on massive amounts of electricity, just to burn the calories and weight off your body to no useful end (other than your health of course) is incredibly wasteful and an inefficient use of resources. Ideally we would eat what we require and use physical activity to produce something of value. However, the Green Microgym is at least harnessing some of that lost energy to sustain itself.

Tags:

bikes, eco-friendly, health, holiday

5 Responses to “ The Green Microgym Harnesses Your Workout Power ”

adam

01. Jan, 2009

dude.

i’ve been so wondering why gyms don’t do that…..

adam

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Waylon

04. Jan, 2009

Way cooler and more practical than our post on http://www.elephantjournal.com/2008/10/your-gym-is-good-for-your-health-bad-for-the-planet-video-ecogym-good-magazine/

Hope one comes to Boulder, or we can further green our existing gyms! Always gets me that folks drive to the gym, too…can’t you bike?

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Demented Chihuahua

08. Jan, 2009

They didn’t interview any of the patrons. I would be interested in hearing what they had to say about it. The whole idea is kinda cool but it seems really niche. The one person-one light thing seems reasonable but I’m not sure how much good all the other stuff is doing. Took way more carbon to produce the gear than the gear will ever be able to save.

I live in Portland and have never seen this place. I’m gonna have to look for it just to check it out. Good idea if not completely useful.

Demented

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Sites linking to this post:

The Green Microgym Harnesses Your Workout Power | Solar Energy Dream

03. Jan, 2009

[...] Via: Green Upgrader [...]

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The Green way to Energize: Exercise « Green Life Smart Life

10. Jan, 2009

[...] part to help the environment is top priority this year. What if you could do both at the same time? GreenUpgrader clued me in on the Green Microgym in Portland, Oregon where this [...]

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