In the past we struggled a lot with establishing new sustainable technologies in our gym because they were always expensive and therefore not competitive enough. It was because of economic reasons that we simply could not afford to use all the technology that we needed to support our idea and our ideals badly.

The efficiency of plug-out technology back then wasn’t that great, so out of a full set of cardio machines we would have only gotten about 5% of the daily energy consumption of our gym in the peak phases of winter and even less during the off peaks in summer and during public holiday.

We were already using solar panels and a mix of renewable energies to minimize the carbon footprint as much as possible. But still it was impossible to become carbon neutral.

Fortunately, technology advanced a lot over the past decade. The efficiency of the energy producing cardio machines, especially ellipticals, cross-trainers and bicycles improved to that point that they can now support the gym with up to 20% of total energy consumption during peak times. Furthermore, now solutions for treadmills and even for basic weighted machines are available to produce energy which raises the production of energy by our members even more.

We also invested in better insulation of our whole building, including windows and doors to make the cooling and heating more efficient. Speaking of efficiency: Our sauna now has an automatic attendance check and a fast heating system. This means that the system shuts down as soon as it detects that there is nobody using the sauna it turns the heating of after 5 minutes. When there is somebody who wants to use the sauna again the fast heating system can reach operating temperature in just about 5 minutes if there is some heat left from previous use. Talking about the lighting of the studio we invested in motion detectors for the locker rooms, showers, sauna and toilets. That way the only place where our staff members have to take care of lighting is the main workout and cardio area. We are confident that we considered many factors to create a very sustainable gym over the past decade.

I also felt a change in the attitude of people towards the whole topic of sustainability since the “Fridays for future” movement started in 2019. Many people in the western hemisphere, including the older generations started to rethink some of their habits and style of living. At least a little. The students supporting the movement back then are now the ones working full time and earning enough money to be able to live more sustainable and invest in stuff like a membership in our gym. We are a little more expensive than our competitors, but we feel like most of the people join us out of conviction.

Interview with a gym representative 2019

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A lot of gyms have a bad energy efficiency even in these days. High energy consumption of a gym nowadays is highly reliant on things like poor heating and cooling efficiency due to missing insulation and old equipment like a sauna. These parts of equipment consume a lot more energy than new and efficient ones but can not be replaced easily due to economic reasons.

To be specific what a gym does nowadays a few examples of what we did in the recent days:

• Our gym replaced all old bulbs with new LED ones which consume only 1/3 of the previously needed energy
• The old ventilation system was replaced by a smart system that regulates the ventilation according to the activity of people present in the room and manages the CO₂ – Level
  • In reality, the system does not work that well to adjust to the activity
• All of the sanitary facilities received completely new equipment to reduce the consumption of the old installations from the 1980s to less than 20% of the previous level
• The insulation was renewed from the inside already and is currently being renewed outside as well

A gym that focuses on sustainability would face certain difficulties. Those would be of mainly economic nature as well as general acceptance of the concept:

Certain target groups would greatly appreciate the idea such as the whole clients related to universities and young people in general. The problem with this would be the financial situation. Even if they liked the idea, most of them would not be willing to pay more if the quality of the equipment justifying the price would rise as well. And even when a group of people would express their support beforehand there would still be a percentage of about 10% of them backing off afterwards.

It might be possible to establish a sustainable gym as a niche in the premium sector of gyms (70€ or more/month) with clients willing to pay that much to have the comfort factor of doing more to preserve the environment while working out. Another chance could be the financing of single facilities by a sponsor or of a whole group of facilities by states support.

The main reason needing that support is purely economic because it is simply not profitable enough to run a facility that purely focuses on sustainability other than profit. To have more gyms investing in a sustainable way of running their facilities there would have to be economic reasons, be it the state through a legislative procedure or a huge change in the way people think. That change would only take place if something major happened like a natural disaster influencing everyday life.