UK Service Provider Goes Green For Festivals

Over the last few years environmentalist groups like Greenpeace have been pushing greener tech and insisting measures be taken to ensure products don’t use more harmful chemicals or materials than is necessary. These days we’re starting to see an awful lot of companies take a greener approach with regard to their products.

UK service provider Orange has made headlines with a new initiative it plans to introduce at the Glastonbury festival this summer.

Glastonbury is a popular music festival, which takes place every year and traditionally lasts between three and four days. Now, anyone who has been to a festival, particularly one where it’s common to camp overnight knows that you charge your cellphone before you leave and for the first day or so, you can call you misplaced friends anytime you like but once your phone is dead, it’s dead. Recent years have seen charging kiosks appear at festivals like these however, its often expensive and so, some prefer to just do without their cellphone for the couple of days they’re out of charge.

Last year Orange launched a small wind turbine for festival goers. The idea was the windmill would charge a battery and then at night you could hook your phone up to the battery for juice.

This year Orange announced plans for a freestanding wind-powered mobile phone charging tent, dubbed the Recharge Pod, the Register reports. Music and mud-lovers alike can pop in and charge their phone for free in the pod and a spokesperson told the Register that if the Recharge Pods prove successful at Glastonbury the company would consider rolling out Recharge Pods to other normal campsites and remote locations. He also said there’s nothing stopping the Recharge Pod from becoming a common occurrence in towns and shopping malls.

However, festival goers be warned, while the pod supports most makes of mobile phones, including the iPhone, it can only charge 100 phones per hour. This year’s line-up boasts countless acts, from Leonard Cohen to the Futureheads and with 177,000 attendees we’re going to agree with the Reg and bet the line for the pod will be really, really, really, long. Anyone up for a midnight jaunt to the Orange tent?