Sustainable Collaboration

Roskilde Festival 2024: A massive laboratory for DTU students

Roskilde Festival is being used as a laboratory for the 13th time by students from DTU. This year, the students are testing 20 projects that can make the festival greener and better.

This year's festival guests can enjoy freshly brewed coffee from the solar-powered coffee shop Energy Bar. The students behind the project want the festival guests to reflect on their own energy consumption. Photo: Ditte Valente.

Wednesday 03 July 2024

Linnea Lundberg

Biodegradable food packaging made from seaweed, a specially designed waste bag for tampons or pads and artificial intelligence, which can be used to control the crowds on the festival site better, reducing the risk of accidents.

These projects can be experienced at this year's Roskilde Festival, which takes place this week. The projects are created by DTU students, and the purpose of them is to solve specific challenges that the festival is facing.

This year, the projects offer new initiatives in areas such as hygiene, waste sorting, energy consumption and reducing food waste. All projects that have been conceived and carried out by students at DTU as part of their education. A supervisor is assigned to each project, and the students typically receive 5 ECTS credits for their work.

For more than ten years, DTU and Roskilde Festival have collaborated to strengthen the education of engineering students and create solutions to the many engineering challenges that arise in a temporary city with around 130,000 inhabitants. Because that's exactly what Roskilde Festival is. In comparison, there are just over 120,000 people living in Aalborg, Denmark's fourth largest city.

All DTU students have had the opportunity to contribute with project ideas or come up with suggestions on how they can solve specific challenges that the festival is facing.

This project is called ButtBuddy and has been created to minimize the amount of cigarette butts that are thrown on the ground every year at the festival. You throw the cigarette butt into the Buttbuddy's mouth, and when its body is completely filled with butts, you empty them into residual waste. Photo: Ditte Valente.
DTU's pavilion in the process of being assembled on this photo. This year, it has been redesigned and has been named ARC, which stands for "Assembly, Reassembly, Continuity". The collaboration between DTU and Roskilde Festival is also known as "Roskilde Festival - Powered by DTU Students". Photo: Ditte Valente.
This project aims after minimizing the amount of sunburns during the festival. It's a touchless sunscreen dispenser. Photo: Ditte Valente.
Here are two of the students behind the project Tactile, which provides visually impaired festival guests with a small plate containing a layout of each festival toilet. Photo: Ditte Valente.
Here is a close-up of Tactile which makes using festival toilets a much nicer experience for visually impaired festival guests. Photo: Ditte Valente.

Contact

Lars Dyreborg Christoffersen

Lars Dyreborg Christoffersen Senior Vice President and Dean of Studies and Student Affairs Phone: +45 45251009